2022 Mercedes-AMG | Petronas F1 Team

[Mezger]

I can understand Lewis being upset with the whole F1 FIAsco. I can understand he doesn't want to discuss it.
What I don't get is why Lewis just can't be the Lewis fighting for awareness, equality, blah, blah.
He can post what he wishes on his social media, but has he ? It doesn't have to be about F1.
So really I don't get why he's hidden himself away from 'everything' for so long.

I hope he comes back sooner rather than later. I think it would be better for his mindset, but what do I know.

[Zynerji]

I think Lewis should return, as his "Still I Rise" would be far more powerful, and would inspire all people that have been "hard done" in life to keep going, and get his 8th crown. The GOAT never quits, or he simply isn't the GOAT.

[ringo]

He will come back. But i think he will be less mellow and have a darker view on things which is good. He needs to get back to his mercenary mindsight. Speak less about racing standards, less about young guys coming up through the sport and all that mellow statesman jibe, and just focus on driving and being in a position where stewards' decisions have no impact.
Meaning he has to be dominant and so does the car.
I also think Lewis is busy rewatching tapes of the 2021 races.

[AeroDynamic]

I think Lewis should return, as his "Still I Rise" would be far more powerful, and would inspire all people that have been "hard done" in life to keep going, and get his 8th crown. The GOAT never quits, or he simply isn't the GOAT.

I never thought of it that way, but you know, to come back and win an 8th title in that way.. that would be Shakespearean.

StillIRise.image

[Henri]

Lewis has no obligation to talk to the media during off season.. his obligation is only to honor his contract and race

[SmallSoldier]

Basically they will have the "special engine" of Hamilton all year.

Still dominant on the engine side, let's see if Ferrari can match this engine.
For RB they will be behind

I doubt it. They could run it aggressive with a short life span. If the path was straight forward to run it aggressive all season then I think they wouldve achieved it sustainably already without needing to employ what was a desperately aggressive strategy late in the season.

I do expect they will come back with a fast engine that doesnt need penalties to compete though. I doubt they even ran that aggressive engine map for all 4 races, I bet it was highest in brazil and then turned down a bit though still higher rhan previously to begin with.

They may not have been able to implement the “fix” in order to be able to run it like in a higher mode because:

A) If they would have introduced the improvement as a reliability upgrade, they would have had to let the rest of the teams know exactly what they were doing to fix it… This would have been undesirable, since it could have also been implemented (or studied) by their rivals… No point in doing so if they thought they could still win the Championship without doing so.

B) The fix may have implied other changes that may not have been considered reliability updates, but instead improvement upgrades, which wasn’t allow by the rules

C) The fix may have required additional work to be done and it simply wasn’t ready to be implemented during the season.

[Csmith1980]

I can understand Lewis being upset with the whole F1 FIAsco. I can understand he doesn't want to discuss it.
What I don't get is why Lewis just can't be the Lewis fighting for awareness, equality, blah, blah.
He can post what he wishes on his social media, but has he ? It doesn't have to be about F1.
So really I don't get why he's hidden himself away from 'everything' for so long.

I hope he comes back sooner rather than later. I think it would be better for his mindset, but what do I know.

Probably because even when he posts about awareness, equality “blah, blah” he still receives a slew of hateful replies.

[AeroDynamic]

Basically they will have the "special engine" of Hamilton all year.

Still dominant on the engine side, let's see if Ferrari can match this engine.
For RB they will be behind

I doubt it. They could run it aggressive with a short life span. If the path was straight forward to run it aggressive all season then I think they wouldve achieved it sustainably already without needing to employ what was a desperately aggressive strategy late in the season.

I do expect they will come back with a fast engine that doesnt need penalties to compete though. I doubt they even ran that aggressive engine map for all 4 races, I bet it was highest in brazil and then turned down a bit though still higher rhan previously to begin with.

They may not have been able to implement the “fix” in order to be able to run it like in a higher mode because:

A) If they would have introduced the improvement as a reliability upgrade, they would have had to let the rest of the teams know exactly what they were doing to fix it… This would have been undesirable, since it could have also been implemented (or studied) by their rivals… No point in doing so if they thought they could still win the Championship without doing so.

B) The fix may have implied other changes that may not have been considered reliability updates, but instead improvement upgrades, which wasn’t allow by the rules

C) The fix may have required additional work to be done and it simply wasn’t ready to be implemented during the season.

Good points, and I agree about last season.

Where I was coming from with my comment though, is how easy and straight forward can it be to redesign the engine to gain that much more performance and durability? If it’s straight forward then why did they get themselves in such a vulnerable position in the first place? That’s why I’m sceptical. I expect they will solve the wear and tear issue and it durable. But to also achieve a sustained aggressive engine map without incurring penalties? I’ll be surprised.. that would indicate that they have been napping on pursuing engine power, and the plenum innovation really casts Doubt on that for me.

[SmallSoldier]

Good points, and I agree about last season.

Where I was coming from with my comment though, is how easy and straight forward can it be to redesign the engine to gain that much more performance and durability? If it’s straight forward then why did they get themselves in such a vulnerable position in the first place? That’s why I’m sceptical. I expect they will solve the wear and tear issue and it durable. But to also achieve a sustained aggressive engine map without incurring penalties? I’ll be surprised.. that would indicate that they have been napping on pursuing engine power, and the plenum innovation really casts Doubt on that for me.

I don’t think I fully understand your thought process and there are a lot of assumptions in your comment. I don’t think anyone has said that it was “easy and straight forward” to redesign the engine, I don’t know where you are getting that from… They are improving their engine, apparently through the design of a new turbo and potentially addressing some reliability issues.

In regards to durability, the previous engine was “durable”, as a matter of fact every engine in the grid (Ferrari, Honda, Renault) could be run harder at the expense of additional wear, those teams simply decided that it wasn’t worth the benefit to drop places in the grid for the additional performance… There was no “wear and tear issue” with the 2021 engine, that engine was capable or running the expected 7 races.

[AeroDynamic]

Good points, and I agree about last season.

Where I was coming from with my comment though, is how easy and straight forward can it be to redesign the engine to gain that much more performance and durability? If it’s straight forward then why did they get themselves in such a vulnerable position in the first place? That’s why I’m sceptical. I expect they will solve the wear and tear issue and it durable. But to also achieve a sustained aggressive engine map without incurring penalties? I’ll be surprised.. that would indicate that they have been napping on pursuing engine power, and the plenum innovation really casts Doubt on that for me.

I don’t think I fully understand your thought process and there are a lot of assumptions in your comment. I don’t think anyone has said that it was “easy and straight forward” to redesign the engine, I don’t know where you are getting that from… They are improving their engine, apparently through the design of a new turbo and potentially addressing some reliability issues.

In regards to durability, the previous engine was “durable”, as a matter of fact every engine in the grid (Ferrari, Honda, Renault) could be run harder at the expense of additional wear, those teams simply decided that it wasn’t worth the benefit to drop places in the grid for the additional performance… There was no “wear and tear issue” with the 2021 engine, that engine was capable or running the expected 7 races.

Jambier suggested they will ‘basically run the special engine’ all year. The special engine was an all out effort to turn the volume up to 11 right? This is an assumption I don’t agree with. The base platform or the engine map where it could run 7 races, is obviously pretty far off the ‘special engine’ map. So to re engineer the whole engine to perform at the ‘special’ level all year with no wear, I’m doubtful. Not impossible of course, but doubtful.

They pushed bloody hard for the 2020 engine for which Cowell apparently found stressful according to his video, a lot of long hours, and pressure from Toto at the top.. which was suggested it may have played a role in cowell’s decision to move on.

They improved with the plenum last year for the ‘21 season, and they have a new innovation coming next year according to rumour. But how are they going to leap so much from what was an all out effort in 2020 already? Particularly on the ICE side.

To say ‘he will have the special engine’ all year, that’s alot of assumptions to blow through to be sure, and I for one think that’s very far from a given.


I’m not sure about the engines wear last season, I was under the impression the wear and tear issue was already a problem without the aggressive engine map they employed. When exactly did they start doing that? Is there any source that make that factual because I’m not familiar with it, I would appreciate some verified information that makes it clear, the wear and tear issue one the ICE was only after they turned the engine up to catch Honda.. which is weird because I thought they were on par to start with but that suggests they were a leap ahead of Mercedes’ day 1 which nobody mentioned in the early season that I recall.

[SiLo]

Good points, and I agree about last season.

Where I was coming from with my comment though, is how easy and straight forward can it be to redesign the engine to gain that much more performance and durability? If it’s straight forward then why did they get themselves in such a vulnerable position in the first place? That’s why I’m sceptical. I expect they will solve the wear and tear issue and it durable. But to also achieve a sustained aggressive engine map without incurring penalties? I’ll be surprised.. that would indicate that they have been napping on pursuing engine power, and the plenum innovation really casts Doubt on that for me.

I don’t think I fully understand your thought process and there are a lot of assumptions in your comment. I don’t think anyone has said that it was “easy and straight forward” to redesign the engine, I don’t know where you are getting that from… They are improving their engine, apparently through the design of a new turbo and potentially addressing some reliability issues.

In regards to durability, the previous engine was “durable”, as a matter of fact every engine in the grid (Ferrari, Honda, Renault) could be run harder at the expense of additional wear, those teams simply decided that it wasn’t worth the benefit to drop places in the grid for the additional performance… There was no “wear and tear issue” with the 2021 engine, that engine was capable or running the expected 7 races.

Maybe a wear and tear issue in that they merc engine appears to lose more HP over those 7 races than the Honda, which loses very little.

[SmallSoldier]

Good points, and I agree about last season.

Where I was coming from with my comment though, is how easy and straight forward can it be to redesign the engine to gain that much more performance and durability? If it’s straight forward then why did they get themselves in such a vulnerable position in the first place? That’s why I’m sceptical. I expect they will solve the wear and tear issue and it durable. But to also achieve a sustained aggressive engine map without incurring penalties? I’ll be surprised.. that would indicate that they have been napping on pursuing engine power, and the plenum innovation really casts Doubt on that for me.

I don’t think I fully understand your thought process and there are a lot of assumptions in your comment. I don’t think anyone has said that it was “easy and straight forward” to redesign the engine, I don’t know where you are getting that from… They are improving their engine, apparently through the design of a new turbo and potentially addressing some reliability issues.

In regards to durability, the previous engine was “durable”, as a matter of fact every engine in the grid (Ferrari, Honda, Renault) could be run harder at the expense of additional wear, those teams simply decided that it wasn’t worth the benefit to drop places in the grid for the additional performance… There was no “wear and tear issue” with the 2021 engine, that engine was capable or running the expected 7 races.

Jambier suggested they will ‘basically run the special engine’ all year. The special engine was an all out effort to turn the volume up to 11 right? This is an assumption I don’t agree with. The base platform or the engine map where it could run 7 races, is obviously pretty far off the ‘special engine’ map. So to re engineer the whole engine to perform at the ‘special’ level all year with no wear, I’m doubtful. Not impossible of course, but doubtful.

They pushed bloody hard for the 2020 engine for which Cowell apparently found stressful according to his video, a lot of long hours, and pressure from Toto at the top.. which was suggested it may have played a role in cowell’s decision to move on.

They improved with the plenum last year for the ‘21 season, and they have a new innovation coming next year according to rumour. But how are they going to leap so much from what was an all out effort in 2020 already? Particularly on the ICE side.

To say ‘he will have the special engine’ all year, that’s alot of assumptions to blow through to be sure, and I for one think that’s very far from a given.


I’m not sure about the engines wear last season, I was under the impression the wear and tear issue was already a problem without the aggressive engine map they employed. When exactly did they start doing that? Is there any source that make that factual because I’m not familiar with it, I would appreciate some verified information that makes it clear, the wear and tear issue one the ICE was only after they turned the engine up to catch Honda.. which is weird because I thought they were on par to start with but that suggests they were a leap ahead of Mercedes’ day 1 which nobody mentioned in the early season that I recall.

I don’t know what Jambier meant exactly with his statement, but I read as Mercedes managing to deploy that amount of power (the one from the “special engine”) from the beginning… How is the additional power generated? My guess is that it’s in part due to the mentioned new turbo, in addition with what is a year worth of development… The article at no point makes mentioned that the engine will be run on extreme maps in 2022, you can infer though that the author thinks that they will be at a similar level of the “super engine”.

The way these engines have developed through the seasons is beyond impressive (for all manufacturers), if as the article states, the Brazil engine generated 18 more horespower, that amount is within reason for what the teams rate of development has been through the years, so not really that surprising.

Mercedes had issues with their 2021 engine from the beginning of the season, first was in regards to battery deployment and later was in regards to reliability (as stated by Mercedes), the reliability fixes were introduced with what was effectively engine number 3 last season… More extensive improvements/updates are probably going to be deployed with the 2022 engine since effectively is the engine that will be freezed until the end of the current engine regulations (2025).

Mercedes has had a whole year to develop their 2022 engine and probably the fact that they were introducing so many engines in the last stretch of the season also helped them learn a few things about the potential weaknesses on them and applied the learnings towards this year… They probably also have learned a thing or two from Honda, who apparently had best of the field engine wear (or better said, the minimum loss of performance through the engine life)… A lot of talk about special coatings to help increase the engine life, again not surprising if Mercedes has invested heavily into that type of technology.

[SmallSoldier]

Good points, and I agree about last season.

Where I was coming from with my comment though, is how easy and straight forward can it be to redesign the engine to gain that much more performance and durability? If it’s straight forward then why did they get themselves in such a vulnerable position in the first place? That’s why I’m sceptical. I expect they will solve the wear and tear issue and it durable. But to also achieve a sustained aggressive engine map without incurring penalties? I’ll be surprised.. that would indicate that they have been napping on pursuing engine power, and the plenum innovation really casts Doubt on that for me.

I don’t think I fully understand your thought process and there are a lot of assumptions in your comment. I don’t think anyone has said that it was “easy and straight forward” to redesign the engine, I don’t know where you are getting that from… They are improving their engine, apparently through the design of a new turbo and potentially addressing some reliability issues.

In regards to durability, the previous engine was “durable”, as a matter of fact every engine in the grid (Ferrari, Honda, Renault) could be run harder at the expense of additional wear, those teams simply decided that it wasn’t worth the benefit to drop places in the grid for the additional performance… There was no “wear and tear issue” with the 2021 engine, that engine was capable or running the expected 7 races.

Maybe a wear and tear issue in that they merc engine appears to lose more HP over those 7 races than the Honda, which loses very little.

Agreed, that seems to be the consensus… That the Mercedes PU loss more HP during the engine life… But my point was that the wear on the engine (and subsequent loss of performance) wasn’t a reliability issue and most probably something well known to Mercedes before the cars hit the track for testing in 2021… The amount of hours that these engines spend in the Dyno is extreme, so they will have enough data to understand that… With the engines frozen during the year and understanding that their rivals were better in that aspect, I would expect Mercedes to put a large part of their focus on improving this.

[AeroDynamic]

Good points, and I agree about last season.

Where I was coming from with my comment though, is how easy and straight forward can it be to redesign the engine to gain that much more performance and durability? If it’s straight forward then why did they get themselves in such a vulnerable position in the first place? That’s why I’m sceptical. I expect they will solve the wear and tear issue and it durable. But to also achieve a sustained aggressive engine map without incurring penalties? I’ll be surprised.. that would indicate that they have been napping on pursuing engine power, and the plenum innovation really casts Doubt on that for me.

I don’t think I fully understand your thought process and there are a lot of assumptions in your comment. I don’t think anyone has said that it was “easy and straight forward” to redesign the engine, I don’t know where you are getting that from… They are improving their engine, apparently through the design of a new turbo and potentially addressing some reliability issues.

In regards to durability, the previous engine was “durable”, as a matter of fact every engine in the grid (Ferrari, Honda, Renault) could be run harder at the expense of additional wear, those teams simply decided that it wasn’t worth the benefit to drop places in the grid for the additional performance… There was no “wear and tear issue” with the 2021 engine, that engine was capable or running the expected 7 races.

Maybe a wear and tear issue in that they merc engine appears to lose more HP over those 7 races than the Honda, which loses very little.

Yeah. That's what I'm starting to become unsure about now, I thought they were one in the same issue.

Isn't the wear and tear of the ICE the same cause for the drop in performance over 7 race life span? if not, what is the cause of that? it is clearly not the same as other engine manufacturers since Mercedes was the only one taking penalties to keep fresh, competitive engines. In the final 4 races they went for another fresh one and ran it in what I'm guessing is some sort of aggressive-party mode type engine map.

my whole thing was, the performance of the Honda was clearly ahead of them because the performance drop over 7 races was due to more aggressive engine mapping in an effort to be competitive with the Honda? no? then what is that about?

if their base map (one that would last 7 races without performance waning) was slower than what they were actually doing in '21 then it seems like a leap on par with what Honda achieved is the only way they're gonna create an engine that sustains as fast, if not faster, engine performance than '21 and without the wear and tear/ performance drop off across its life span. Hard to imagine as I said, because they were already pushed to pulling their hair out in 2019–2020. If there is a team that can do it, I'm sure it's Mercedes.

[Big Tea]

Good points, and I agree about last season.

Where I was coming from with my comment though, is how easy and straight forward can it be to redesign the engine to gain that much more performance and durability? If it’s straight forward then why did they get themselves in such a vulnerable position in the first place? That’s why I’m sceptical. I expect they will solve the wear and tear issue and it durable. But to also achieve a sustained aggressive engine map without incurring penalties? I’ll be surprised.. that would indicate that they have been napping on pursuing engine power, and the plenum innovation really casts Doubt on that for me.

I don’t think I fully understand your thought process and there are a lot of assumptions in your comment. I don’t think anyone has said that it was “easy and straight forward” to redesign the engine, I don’t know where you are getting that from… They are improving their engine, apparently through the design of a new turbo and potentially addressing some reliability issues.

In regards to durability, the previous engine was “durable”, as a matter of fact every engine in the grid (Ferrari, Honda, Renault) could be run harder at the expense of additional wear, those teams simply decided that it wasn’t worth the benefit to drop places in the grid for the additional performance… There was no “wear and tear issue” with the 2021 engine, that engine was capable or running the expected 7 races.

Maybe a wear and tear issue in that they merc engine appears to lose more HP over those 7 races than the Honda, which loses very little.

I get a little confused over the terminology we hear over this.
If motor A can produce 750 hp long term but is run at 720 for the first 3 races
And Motor B can run at 750hp and always is, does that mean motor A has 'wear and tear issues' or motor B does not produce so much power when new?

I hear a tin of worms opening, but I promise I am not 'fishing' or trouble making for the sake of it.