"It has been a pretty frustrating season"- Mercedes' technical director on 'roller coaster' ride in 2022

Mercedes technical director Mike Elliot has said that the season has been a very frustrating one for the team.

Mercedes entered the season hoping to exact revenge after their disappointing end to last season. As things turned out, their car hasn't been good enough to challenge for the championship. Their zero-sidepod design failed, leaving Mercedes as the third fastest car in the grid, behind Red Bull and Ferrari.

Moreover, Mercedes' performances have been pretty up and down, which Eliiott has termed 'frustrating'. In the Mercedes debrief video, he said:

"I think it has been a pretty frustrating season. Not only from our general performance level compared to where we have been in previous years, but also the roller coaster we’ve been on race to race where we have seen our performance go up and down."

He continued:

"I think we’ve been working hard to improve performance and we’ve gradually been doing that through the season, but we’ve also been trying to get on top of this understanding of why certain circuits are good for us and certain circuits bad for us."

While looking for positives, Elliot said that the team is now more equipped in understanding the tracks where they could struggle and where they could do well. For instance, they knew Zandvoort was going to be a good track, but there were reservations about Monza. He said:

“The word that has come out of that has sort of given us a tool that pretty much allows us to predict where we will be, so we knew going into Monza it would be a more challenging circuit. It would be a bit more like we had seen it in Spa and less like we had seen it at Zandvoort and Budapest."

Mercedes (371) are third in the constructors standings, trailing Red Bull (545) and Ferrari (406).

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Given the car we had, we could not have achieved anything else - Mercedes technical director

Mike Elliot was complimentary of the team's drivers and operations. Despite massive hurdles, the team has done a decent job in the championship this season.

Although they are yet to win a race, they have had multiple double podium finishes while George Russell setting the team's first pole of the season at Hungary. Elliot said:

“I think having said that, given the car we had, to bring it back in third and fifth places, I think was a good result for us. It showed we operated the car really well; the drivers got the best out of it. Given the position we are in with the car, I think I couldn’t ask(ed) for any more than that.”

The German team has not had a winless season since 2012 when Nico Rosberg won the team's first F1 race. Mercedes have six races to continue that streak.