“It’ll go up exponentially,” Damon Hill warns of Mercedes’ unlocking of hidden performance

The 2022 Formula 1 season has completed four rounds and heads into the fifth at the Miami Grand Prix. This modern season of the sport is dictated by a rule change and has shown signs of real promise. The story so far has been the fight on the top of the grid between the Red Bull and Ferrari, with the 8 time constructor champions finding themselves off the pace. However, a season witnessing a race for car development might change come the finale at Abu Dhabi.

Going to Miami, Ferrari are speculated to add new parts to its F1-75 to make a comeback against its rivals, Red Bull. The 1996 Formula 1 world champion, Damon Hill expressed his views on the constructor championship battle saying, “Well, the upgrade thing is a very interesting one, because they’ve also got these constraints now that are going to apply to the teams that have had the most points from the previous season and so forth” referring to the aerodynamic testing restrictions sliding scale that affects how much wind tunnel and CFD time each team is permitted

ALSO READ : Zak Brown has not affirmed Daniel Ricciardo’s McLaren future, said will start the talk “probably later this year”

FS Video

Damon Hill Compares 2022 Formula 1 Race For Development With Poker

The current season of Formula 1 is also introduced with a cost cap which effects each team on the grid. This is done to level the racing grid and prevent Formula 1 teams from overspending. Red Bull CTO, Adrian Newey talked about the effects of said cost cap over introduction of upgrades. Damon Hill elaborated on it by saying “Adrian was saying that they have to be very careful about when they bring these upgrades and which ones they apply, because they can’t just throw stuff at it anymore. So they’re sitting down and thinking about it, and it’s a bit like playing poker. They need to know which card to lay down when.”

Hill assessed the season story so far for Mercedes by saying “If Mercedes can work out to get the car lower, it’s an exponential curve. It doesn’t go up linearly, it’ll go up exponentially. If you can get your car half a centimetre lower, you get maybe double the amount of downforce or efficiency. So they’ve got to control that really difficult increment in downforce. It wants to suck so hard that it actually wants to suck onto the ground.”

The former world champion concluded by saying “We’re so early in the development of these new regulations. There’s this really tantalising massive carrot that’s dangling right in front of them but they can’t get to it.” The 2022 season still entails a prospect of 19 races yet to come and the rivalry between the teams will become more and more engrossing as the season unwraps itself.

ALSO READ : “I think it’s one of my favorite ones,” Max Verstappen reveals new helmet for the Miami GP

ALSO READ : “We have found several directions,” Toto Wolff confirms multiple paths to experiment with ahead of the Miami GP