Mercedes explains regulation changes
Mercedes says that the regulation changes for this season are fraught with “jeopardy” and “landmines,” while insisting they have the opportunity to prove they haven’t been “lucky” with their previous title-winning cars.
In his regular vlog on the team’s social media channels where he explained the new regulations and the challenges ahead in detail, technical director James Allison also predicted that some teams will have got their preparations “badly wrong” and will have a “terribly painful” season.
The aerodynamic packages for this year have been completely overhauled in an attempt to create closer, more competitive and exciting racing. Allison says the changes “dwarf anything else I’ve ever seen” and that the team have redesigned the car “from tip to toe”.
Allison said in a Mercedes preview video for 2022, “The ruleset is not only enormous – the regulations are about twice the size of what’s preceded them – but they’re all almost entirely different from what came before them.”
“That has meant we’ve had to redesign the car from tip to toe, everywhere you look it’s completely new.” He says it’s not just new parts but a new philosophy, with completely new aerodynamic package, brakes, wheels and tyres.
All the teams have been working on these cars for years, with the Englishman admitting that it was a “hard and very challenging process”. He also explained why there were potential for “landmines”, but also “treasure”.
He explained that the scale of these changes are huge, with Mercedes approaching them with fun as well as relishing the challenges of looking for opportunities in the regulations. Allison hopes that despite the minefield the team hopes they have picked up treasure along the way, which will see them at the front of the grid.
Mercedes have been incredibly lucky in the eight years since the last regulation changes, taking seven drivers and eight constructors championships since the beginning of the hybrid era.
Allison added, “It’s not unique to Mercedes to be excited about the regulation set but it is something I can speak of with personal experience that we do love it when new regulations come along.”
Increased one-stop races shouldn’t worry fans – Pirelli
Pirelli believes that the increased chance of one-stop races this year should not worry fans if the racing is better on track. As part of the technical regulation changes and a move to ground effect cars, new eighteen-inch tyres will also be introduced.
The changes are designed so that the rubber not being too sensitive to overheating as they move to be slightly harder. That means less tyre degradation, thus meaning the drivers need to make fewer pit stops.
Why one-stop races are not what the sport wants, Pirelli’s head of car and F1 Mario Isola, believes that fewer stops will not influence the show if there are spectacular battles on track.
He told Motorspot.com, “I hope we don’t have less strategic variabilities. “The idea and the way in which we have designed the tyres is to continue to have different strategies, with a mix of one and two stops. It is also true that with a new product with less degradation, it is possible that we will have less pitstops and most races could be one-stop.
“For me, it is not an issue as long as we have good races and action on track. If we have drivers that can push for an overtake, and when overtaking is too easy, it’s not good, it is important that drivers are putting a lot of effort in to overtake.”
Isola says a survey of fans said most of them didn’t want easy overtaking and wanted on-track action and fighting. He also says the approach of tyres was different chasing the characteristics which the drivers have asked for.
He says the tyres are designed differently with different targets to meet the driver’s request to push the tyres so they can fight on track. These tyres have been designed with a new profile and construction should optimise the footprint of the tyres.
While the hope is that the tyres will work as intended without difficulties, they will continue to develop the tyres and have a back up plan if they don’t work for 2023.
He explained, “this year we find that we have to change, maybe one compound, or the delta lap time is not exactly what we expect, or the level of degradation is not exactly what we expect, we have a back-up plan to be sure that we move closer to the targets, and we achieve the targets for 2023.:
Isola says if Pirelli gets it right along with the regulation changes, designed to allow the cars to follow closer.
Alpine “lost” at the start of 2021 – Rossi
Alpine CEO Laurent Rossi has admitted the team was “lost” at the beginning of 2021, but said its fluctuating form became “more linear than you think” after understanding the car better.
The French manufacturers 2021 was up and down, with their qualifying sessions being inconsistent and were somewhere between fifth and seventeenth with points finishes being irregular. Before the summer break the team enjoyed a breakthrough Hungarian Grand Prix, in which Ocon took his maiden Grand Prix win and Alonso grabbed fourth.
Several strong showings followed in the latter half of the season, most notably in Zandvoort, Russia and Qatar, which yielded a podium for Alonso, but it was nowhere in Monza, Austin and Mexico. Rossi admitted Alpine was “lost” in the early stages of 2021, saying the team “didn’t even know” how it managed to score points in a troublesome Monaco weekend.
He told Motorsport.com, “At the beginning of the season we were lost. Monaco is actually a very poor memory and that moment we were lost we had no idea what to do.”
“We scored points, but we didn’t even know-how. That was difficult because we couldn’t understand the car so well. It was early days, after that we knew what to expect.” Rossi explains that from the inside the pace continued to fluctuate was not as dramatic as it looked when the team started to understand the car’s strengths and weaknesses.
That process he said took four or five months, but they built there constantly with Budapest was a dramatic display of when we get it all together. Following that race, Rossi says that Alpine believed the team could score points at every race more or less.
Tracks with low grip tarmac, like Austin, proved to be weaknesses for Alpine. The poor race in both Austin and Mexico City allowed Alpha Tauri to level the points in the battle for fifth. The team however remained confident that more suitable circuits were coming up.
Rossi added, “We knew Austin would be extremely difficult. Everyone was like: ‘Oh, maybe it’s the end of Alpine and AlphaTauri is going to catch up’. We were not sure we would manage to resist AlphaTauri, but we were sure which races would benefit us.”
No better teammate than Bottas – Zhou
Guanyu Zhou says there could be no better teammate to have for his rookie season than the “open” Valtteri Bottas. Zhou will become the first Chinese driver to race in F1 with Alfa Romeo after stepping up from F2, to partner the Finn, who joins following five years at Mercedes.
Zhou and Bottas had their first experience working together at last year’s post-season Abu Dhabi F1 tyre test. Despite knowing how good Bottas is after helping Mercedes to multiple constructors’ championship titles, Zhou thinks being up against the Finn is a huge plus for him.
During a recent interview on social media, said Zhou, “For a rookie, there is no better option than to have Bottas as your teammate in your first season. If I’m going to beat him, I know I need to work very hard and adapt very quickly to the whole of F1, and to the new car, from the very beginning.”
“But I think what’s more important is that he can help me get through the learning curve. He is a very open driver. He shares his information and discusses with the team and with me, which is a very helpful point.
“After all, he’s had so many podiums and wins in F1. Among all the drivers, there are only a few who can outqualify Hamilton, and he is one of them. I think he’s a great reference and a very strong teammate. I hope to improve together with him next year.”
In F2 last year, Zhou finished the season third and since made the headlines in China since being confirmed to race in F1 last November.
Asked about his goal in his first F1 season, the 22-year-old made it clear that he is determined to bring home points for his team. Saying “First of all, I set a small goal to get points. I don’t know how competitive the car will be next season. We need to wait until the beginning of the season to get a clear picture.
Tsunoda Future in own hands – Tost
Alpha Tauri team principal Franz Tost says Yuki Tsunoda has his future in his own hands after being handed a second season despite having a difficult debut season. The Japanese driver did show flashes of speed and potential in his first season, however, he also had various crashes and errors as the Japanese youngster was overshadowed by teammate Pierre Gasly.
Tsunoda raised eyebrows with a ninth-place on his Bahrain debut but then struggled to build on that result. While Gasly consistently raked in the points to keep Alpha Tauri in the fight for fifth in the constructors’ championship, Tsunoda’s confidence took a knock as he claimed only six further top-ten finishes.
It took until Tsunoda moved from the UK to Faenza last summer, for him to develop a more disciplined approach and dig himself out of the poor early-season hole. But Tost says he never questioned him, going into his second season Tost says “it is now in his hands” to turn his raw talent into results.
He told Motorsport.com, “I can only say that Yuki is a really fantastic driver Now, it’s also in his hands what he is making out of this, because to have talent is one story. I know a couple of F1 drivers that were really talented, but they won maybe one race or even no race.”
“As a F1 driver you cannot do enough physical training, nutrition is very important, to be really disciplined. And the complete way of life must be 100% matching what F1 requests. This is now in his hands.”
“We can only advise him, but then he has to do it by himself. And this is where you will see [if he] can become a real top star. From the driving side, he can do it. Now it’s up to him.”
But Tost says that Tsunoda’s first season was “a fantastic example” of what a rookie season should be and looked worse than it did because he was paired with an outstanding and now highly experienced Gasly. He pointed out that is was the first time that the team hasn’t had two relative rookies at the start of the year, making the difference more obvious.
He added, “What happened with Yuki is totally easy to explain. [In Bahrain] he did a good race, finished ninth, everything fantastic. And it was clear for me a crash would come soon, because Yuki drove already on the limit.”
Tost says that young drivers are ‘on the limit’, with Tsunoda believing after Bahrain that ‘F1 is not so difficult.’
Those crashes duly came, with an aggressive Tsunoda crashing out in Imola in both qualifying and the race, followed by further offs in subsequent races as his confidence started taking a knock and a move to Italy was arranged. Tost says that Tsunoda lost confidence and then that is when the questions start.
Tost says he believes that “a young driver needs a minimum of three years to understand a little bit F1, because (it) is much more complex as people think.”
