Lewis Hamilton claims “extremely frustrating” 2022 season a source of inspiration for Mercedes engineers

Mercedes has struggled to find the right balance in terms of performance ever since the ground-effect regulations were introduced in 2022.

Lewis Hamilton claims “extremely frustrating” 2022 season a source of inspiration for Mercedes engineers

Lewis Hamilton and Toto Wolff (Via IMAGO)

Mercedes has had a victory drought since George Russell won the 2022 Brazilian GP. The Silver Arrows seem to have struggled with the ground-effect regulations. The Brackley-based squad has had another difficult start to the season this season. Now, Lewis Hamilton traced back to the the issues faced by Mercedes at the start of the 2022 season.

Lewis Hamilton reflected upon the difficult first race weekend in 2022. The Briton mentioned that the Silver Arrows was forced to remove 90 aerodynamic load points from the car to fix porpoising issues. Porpoising on the W13 led to loss of crucial performance which hampered the team. Hamilton asserted that the more load points the team installed, the more the car bounced.

In the first race of 2022, we had to remove something like 90 aerodynamic load points from the car. So we had load but we couldn't take advantage of it because of porpoising: we lost a lot of performance every time we added more, because the car bounced again.
Lewis Hamilton said, as reported by formulapassion.it.
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Lewis Hamilton recalled how it was ‘frustrating’ for the entire crew not to score decent results despite the hard work. However, the situation, despite being frustrating was a great ‘source of inspiration’ for the engineers and the crew at Mercedes. The crew showed up every day and gave their best despite the degrading performance as mentioned by the seven-time world champion.

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It was extremely frustrating, I think, for the engineers, but I think it was a source of inspiration for them, who continue to show up every day and give their best.
Lewis Hamilton noted.

Lewis Hamilton claims Red Bull solved its ‘problem’ in 2022 pre-season

In comparison to Mercedes’ struggles, Red Bull has dominated the new era of Formula 1. Hence, Milton Keynes was acquainted well with the new regulations. Lewis Hamilton guessed that Red Bull solved the problems early on during the first testing session in Bahrain in 2022. The RB18 seemed far more planted on the straights compared to the rest of cars in pre-season that year.

I think Red Bull solved the problem during the first test in Bahrain.
Lewis Hamilton said.
Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen
Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen (via IMAGO)

Red Bull has continued to develop the quickest cars on the grid since regulation changes. A majority of the credit for this goes to Adrian Newey’s skillset in developing such capable cars. Hamilton claimed that Milton Keynes started to develop on the basis of the learnings from its problem incurred at the start of 2022.

They did it and I think that once the problem was solved they started to develop on that basis.
Lewis Hamilton declared.

Hence, Red Bull will likely dominate even the 2024 season and the coming seasons before regulation changes. But with Lewis Hamilton’s move to Ferrari, the Briton could be provided with a shot at championship contention. However, Hamilton’s current prospects at Mercedes likely offer no chance for the seven-time world champion to contend for the championship.

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