As a few of us said from the start - suspension problems with W13 started once they understood they need to run the car higher than they designed it for. From Barca, the new floor was much more moderate with its design but bumps still caused a lot of trouble - flapping floor edges in the rear did not help with that.
The teams for their part found themselves having to manage different heights from the ground, facing new challenges both in the aerodynamics and suspension mechanics fields. Mike Elliott, Mercedes technical director, previously explained how this radical change of concept had led the team to make a mistake of concept. New explanations provided by the top management of Brackley illuminate how the W13 was conceived as an excessively low single-seater: “In October we discussed how to extract performance from the bottom and how the trick was to make it turn as close to the ground as possible . This put us on the wrong track,” comments Toto Wolf. The words of the Team Principal are reinforced by those of Mike Elliott:“In racing car aerodynamics there's often something to be gained from turning lower. In the wind tunnel we saw huge gains working this way. In retrospect, we've pushed too far in that direction and learned a lot about that."
However, Mercedes had not foreseen the problems of aerodynamic instability of the road surface which, through the breaking of the flow at low heights from the ground, trigger the rebound: “The porpoising affected everyone on the grid, but with different intensities. We were the extreme case."In fact, aerodynamic rebound proves to be extremely difficult to replicate in the wind tunnel, where the model does not have suspensions, equally important in triggering the phenomenon, and where the weight is not entirely discharged onto the wheels, but onto a rod anchored to the ceiling . Thus, while the W13's low ground clearance in the tunnel promised high levels of downforce, the limitations of propoising on the track forced some of the potential to be forfeited. Mercedes had thus presented itself at the Spanish Grand Prix with a new, less performing bottom, but finally able to work at the desired heights. “In Barcelona we took a big step forward ”, continues Elliott , “where we gave up some of the wind tunnel performance to reduce bounce . The result was a car that could finally turn at the ground clearance we wanted. To achieve this, however, we had to give up part of the aerodynamic performance".
After returning to its design height from the ground, the W13 experienced further problems once it started running on rougher tarmac: “ We thought we were chasing again, but then we ended up on circuits with lots of bumps and it was like getting kicked in the teeth . We still had work to do." Elliott then explained how the team began working on the pavement to improve its aerodynamic stability, progressively updating it at Silverstone, Spa and finally Austin: “In the following races in Barcelona new problems emerged with the car, deriving from lapping closer to the ground. It took a while to sort everything out, not because we didn't understand, but precisely because we needed time to change the car and find a way to express performance. Each update package has taken us one small step in the right direction. From Austin on we had a car which, while it couldn't beat Red Bull, was in a position to certify that we had developed in the right direction."
Toto Wolf, on the other hand, commented on the 2022 season, describing the first half of the championship up to Budapest as a succession of experiments to rediscover the correlation between the track and simulation tools. The performance in Hungary also demonstrated how the W13 was particularly effective at medium-low distances: “We did very well in Budapest. We knew that the car and the power unit were working in the optimal window mainly in the low speed cornering range ”.Mercedes thus demonstrates that it has treasured the lessons learned in 2022. It will be interesting to see if next season's W14 will also try to work at minimum heights from the ground or if instead it will move towards a different compromise, developing a different concept of work for the bottom .
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