"Regain land centimeter by centimeter" - Mercedes' plans to overcome initial deficit against Red Bull and Ferrari

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has outlined his team’s plan to claw back their deficit against rivals Red Bull and Ferrari across the 2022 season.

Wolff said the team are focussing on the ‘bigger picture’ i.e. staying in the championship battle, rather than focussing on individual races.

Speaking to GPfans following the Bahrain GP, he said:

“The long game is 10 years and that is why when I even look at the season, with stable regulations until 2026, it is how well you learn and that is why, for me, I would qualify the race as a test. There is more understanding of where the gaps lie, it is in pretty much every area, and now we just need to regain land centimetre by centimetre.”

Mercedes’ interim fixes to their proposing issues have cost them dearly in terms of performance. In the 2022 season opener in Bahrain last weekend, they struggled just to keep up with Ferrari and Red Bull.

Despite running the largest rear-wing among the front runners, the team struggled for downforce as they were forced to raise the W13’s rear suspension higher than their rivals. The lesser downforce also meant the car was hard on its tires, increasing degradation.

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Mercedes reportedly fared better than expected in Bahrain, according to team’s technical chief

Mercedes technical director James Allison has claimed that the team fared much better at the Bahrain Grand Prix than he had feared after a difficult pre-season testing.

Speaking in the team’s “Bahrain race debrief” video posted on social media, Allison said:

“After winter testing I’d feared worse and I think actually the performance improvement we’ve managed to deliver from winter testing to the first race, while perhaps not visible to the fans and perhaps not reassuring to the fans, is reassuring in-house here within the team.”

Allison said that he was “comforted” after some of the fixes that the team brought to their issues during the Bahrain Grand Prix weekend worked as expected. Going by their current progress, he expects the team to overcome their problems “swiftly” and get back to competing for championships in no time.