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Mercedes Executive Director Toto Wolff believes there won’t be a large gap between the teams with the new cars in the 2022 season. The Austrian team principal revealed the loopholes in the regulations will not be advantageous and the cars will be very close in performance.
Speaking to German publication Auto Motor und Sport, the Mercedes boss said:
“I believe that the budget cap will bring many things into line. If someone finds a loophole and runs away with it, everyone will recreate it. The cars will all be very similar. There can still be differences in the first year. After that it will balance out. There will no longer be a team that drives a second ahead.”
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Wolff believes the budget cost caps that are in effect for the 2022 season will level the playing field to a large extent. Explaining the differences between the teams in the upcoming season, Wolff predicted there won’t be more than a second of an advantage between the cars.
The Mercedes boss believes the first year could still witness a bit of disparity between the teams, but the following years will even out the differences between the performances of the teams.
Mercedes boss denies having a significant advantage for the 2022 season
Toto Wolff believes it is very difficult to predict if Mercedes will have a significant advantage in the 2022 season. The Austrian believes they had a similar feeling in 2021 and rule changes last season put them on the back foot. According to Wolff, the 2022 season will be unpredictable due to the steep developmental curve throughout the season.
Predicting the upcoming season for his team and in general, Wolff said:
“We believed that last year too. Then the regulations were changed and our time advantage was gone. The development curve for the 2022 cars is currently rising so steeply that you cannot predict who will do it better and smarter.”
The reason the 2022 season will be a mixed bag in terms of performance is largely due to the aerodynamic development that will be done over the course of the entire season. So one can expect undulated momentum in the championship again like 2021 but with more teams involved this time.
