Lewis Hamilton and George Russell are set to drive the challenging W13 at least one more time before switching to their 2023 challenger, with the duo set to complete a Pirelli tyre test at Jerez, Spain.
The Mercedes duo and Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll will be completing two days of testing reportedly in the 2022 cars, as part of Pirelli’s final evaluation over the 2023 compounds.
According to Spanish site Marca, the drivers will be targeting over 100 laps each, in what is a behind-closed-doors test with no official timekeeping.
Hamilton and Russell likely won’t be best pleased to have to drive the W13 once again, given how many issues the car gave the Brackley-based outfit.
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The biggest issue of the lot was porpoising, with the Silver Arrows having invested in new equipment and tools to be able to solve the problem ahead of the forthcoming season, according to Mercedes’ head of trackside engineering Andrew Shovlin.
“The way that we’re working, the way that we’re assessing developments on the car – that is what we’ve been investing in,” Shovlin told Autosport following the close of the 2022 season.
“And that investment has meant that the car that we [were] racing on track is perhaps not as quick as it would’ve been if we’d gone flat out with our development heads on.
“But it was very much a case of trying to crack the code of what was happening with these cars aerodynamically.
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“And, once we could understand that, development-wise it is a bit like ‘the lights have suddenly come on again and we can see where we’re going and we know what we want chase for future performance’.”
Completing the test at Jerez will at least give Hamilton and Russell an opportunity to prepare for the new season and get into the best shape possible, with both likely targeting a title charge in 2023.
If the Germans 2023 challenger is a title contender, then it’s all but certain that Hamilton and Russell will be amongst the fight for the title, something which will present an interesting challenge for Toto Wolff to handle.