Toto Wolff says his Mercedes team's infamous W13 silver arrow will have a "special place" in the Brackley squad's collection, although one located "very far back"!
After dominating F1 for the better part of eight years, Mercedes came close to concluding its 2022 campaign without a single winner's trophy to add to its massive array of silverware.
Fortunately, George Russell saved the team's honour by winning in Brazil. But Wolff's standout memory from 2022 will be his team's relentless struggles to overcome the complexities and porpoising issues of Mercedes' recalcitrant charger, a car that forced the team's engineers to burn a massive amount of midnight oil just to understand the underlying problems, let alone solve them.
"I think this car will always have a special place in our collection - very far back," commented Wolff.
"But I think that hopefully the next few years will do her justice, because the learning curve with that car was enormous.
"Our fundamental understanding of aerodynamic, vehicle dynamics correlation, has really gone through a step change of learning.
"And it will also not be forgotten as a car that dominated the Brazilian Grand Prix!"
Mercedes endured, on site at the track and back at base, countless hours of studying, analysing and developing interspersed with setbacks.
But eventually, the team's tireless efforts yielded progress in the back-half of the 2022 season.
"I think we much better understand what the problems were," explained Wolff.
"We’ve been peeling onion layer after onion layer off, discovering more issues and more problems. But I think we’ve come to a point that we understand pretty well why the car is not performing.
"As I said before, the correlation is there for some tracks. So it’s all in the fine detail of how can we make the car work aerodynamically, how can we improve the ride, and make it more stable as a basis.
"It’s multiple factors that contribute to a car that is simply just not good enough, and I think if we are able to sort that out over the winter, at least we can provide a stable platform to the drivers, we can develop it from there."
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