The major changes in regulations that came at the start of 2022 provided teams with the challenge of designing the fastest car possible under the new constraints.
While some teams such as Red Bull and Ferrari quickly got to grips with F1’s new era, other struggled and encountered unexpected problems with their designs.
Mercedes were one of the teams to struggle with porpoising, a violent bouncing cause by the aerodynamic design of the new era of Formula 1 cars, which was causing drivers a lot of pain when driving the car.
The height at which teams decided to run their car from the ground had a major impact on the porpoising, as the lower the car, the worse the bouncing, but also the more aerodynamic the car.
READ: ‘Bloated’ FIA blasted by driver for ‘meddlesome’ involvement
Eventually the FIA stepped in to tighten the rules surround the underfloors of the cars, limiting the flexibility of the floors and eliminating loopholes that could have been exploited by teams to gain performance.
The FIA’s technical director of single-seaters Nikolas Tomazis has spoken about the FIA’s underfloor intervention, claiming that they did not believe that any teams were cheating, but admitting that there were exploitable loopholes in the original rules.
“Teams clearly always tend to work on the edge of the regulations, and we didn’t think anybody was cheating back then,” he explained.
“But the way the regulations were written permitted a bit of trickery, let’s say, that was unintended. That’s why we clarified the regulations by a technical directive and put some changes in the regulations.
“There’s two areas of the regulations where we can act unilaterally without F1 commission approval. The one is to do with stiffness, Article 3.15, and the other one is to do with safety. That gave us the necessary ability to act on that front.”
READ: Max Verstappen makes blunt comment about Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas
Mercedes have admitted that they chose the wrong development path in the 2022 pre-season, claiming that the porpoising problem was a result of the team incorrectly understanding the new regulations.
With the rules clarified ahead of the 2023 season, and Mercedes having learnt from their 2022 shortcomings, the Silver Arrows will be confident of producing a more competitive car than the W13 for next season.
Ahead of the team’s winter shutdown, Mercedes have fired up the engine of the W14 for the very first time, showing that they are fully focused on developing their 2023 challenger.