The seven-time world champion has promised to make one of the most attractive intra-group competitions in 2022 with the star of the future.
But Mercedes’ new W13 proved to be a good tool for much of the season opener. Lewis Hamilton and his new team-mate George Russell were preoccupied with the medium-to-long-term challenge of identifying a fundamentally flawed chassis, which at times became a distraction from the short-term goal of achieving the best possible results.
In-season testing is almost non-existent, and with practice time strictly limited to race weekends more than two years ago, Mercedes decided to spend the pre-race weekend testing different car settings. They sacrificed high performance to speed up their investigation into a car they didn’t fully understand to begin with, which surprised them until the moment.
This practice continued until the Canadian Grand Prix, with Hamilton running a more aggressive set-up – a logical move as he has more experience as a driver and in Mercedes’ previous cars. But at times these clearly undermined his performance, as was most evident at the Baku City Circuit, where he ran a lower ride height than Rolle and suffered a painfully slow ride.
Having opened the season with a podium finish, boasting W13 and taking four months to improve, Hamilton lost the next seven races to Russell. The detractors shrugged it off, but once Mercedes resumed normal service, it was clear that Hamilton had the upper hand until the final race.
In the next 11 races, Hamilton qualified ahead of Russell, except for Austria, where both occurred, and when he suffered a DRS error while passing Hungary and Mercedes. Hamilton’s race pace was also strong, particularly in Hangaring who started seventh on the grid and finished ahead of his pole-winning team-mate.
As the season drew to a close, Russell made a performance move that seemed to coincide with the introduction of Mercedes’ latest upgrade package, making the W13 a more competitive proposition. The qualifying gap between them narrowed to nothing in Mexico and Abu Dhabi, and Russell claimed a valuable third in Brazil with rain falling in Q3, a prerequisite for his Grand Prix win two days later.
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Mercedes almost put Ferrari to shame in the Constructors’ Championship. Still, when they got it wrong, they did so spectacularly: Hamilton rode Fernando Alonso’s Alpine at Spa, while Russell took Carlos Sainz Jr to the Circuit of the Americas.
With Russell leading his team-mate by 37 points through the first eight races of the year, that gap can largely be attributed to the team’s set-up and Hamilton’s struggles in Melbourne and Miami. Still, if the curtain fell on a season, Hamilton would have cut that deficit to just 25 – a four-lap car crash to go in Abu Dhabi contributed to a 14-point swing.
So Russell didn’t deserve to end the season ahead of Hamilton in points, but there was surprisingly little in it, and the newcomer was in fine form in the final races, including what could have been his team-mate’s first win. The second season goes to Mercedes.
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Non-representative comparisons were omitted. Negative value: Hamilton was fast; Positive Value: Russell was fast.
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2022 F1 season
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