Mercedes’s new W13 has run on track for the first time ahead of the 2022 F1 season.
Despite heavy winds from storm Eunice battering much of Britain, the team took advantage of the opportunity to hold a filming day at Silverstone, where the new car was presented for the first time earlier today.George Russell, the team’s new driver for 2022, was first to take the new car onto the track. His team mate Lewis Hamilton took over later in the day, by which time conditions had improved.
Mercedes join Aston Martin, Ferrari and Red Bull in running shakedown tests for their new cars ahead of the start of the season. Red Bull ran in secret at Silverstone yesterday.
Pictures: First run for Mercedes W13
Video: First run for Mercedes W13
We've missed that sound. 🎶🤩 pic.twitter.com/EvlxgFKjCp
— Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team (@MercedesAMGF1) February 18, 2022
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
2022 F1 season
- Las Vegas race backers looking to extend F1 deal beyond 2025
- Why Mercedes put ‘a reminder of joy and pain’ on display in their factory lobby
- Verdict on error in GT race suggests Mercedes would have lost 2021 Abu Dhabi GP appeal
- Title ‘stolen’ from Mercedes made us ‘underdogs people cheer for’ – Wolff
- Red Bull Racing spent £230m during Verstappen’s title-winning 2021 campaign
hahostolze (@hahostolze)
18th February 2022, 13:40
The colour is oddly pale. Not metallic like the previous Silver Arrows. Almost like cheap plastic. Maybe this will be different in another light.
Qeki (@qeki)
18th February 2022, 14:38
@hahostolze Isn’t that the word for the british weather
Qeki (@qeki)
18th February 2022, 14:39
Put it under the lights of Singapore or the coast of Miami and it will look better.
AMG44 (@amg44)
18th February 2022, 13:48
Mercedes W13 surprisingly looks like an evolution of their previous car, the W12. The sidepods, the curly floor, look more evolutionary than revolutionary.
Ferrari looks the most radical and revolutionary car so far and i have a feeling Ferrari will be the initial pace setter.
theRealMax (@millionus)
18th February 2022, 13:51
+1
Sensord4notbeingafanboi (@peartree)
18th February 2022, 14:18
Somehow the BIGGEST change in rules for 40 years! Said someone at Ferrari and the merc looks like an evolution of last year’s car, even thr front wing looks 21 but bigger.
Jere (@jerejj)
18th February 2022, 15:24
@peartree Newey is the one who originally made the biggest ever reference, AFAIA, but I see the point about evolution rather than revolution.
Sensord4notbeingafanboi (@peartree)
21st February 2022, 0:05
@jerejj The quote is on this site. I’m quoting ferrari’s article because as I disagree with amg44.
Boomerang
18th February 2022, 20:20
-1 The only thing I’ve seen being truly revolutionary are tires. They did so many revolutions per lap.
erikje
18th February 2022, 21:28
Less then 2021!
SpaFrancorchamps (@spafrancorchamps)
18th February 2022, 21:51
It is not an evolution. If you had watched the Mercedes presentation you’d heard them say that the only part that crossed over to 2022 was the steering wheel. It is a totally different car.
Yaru (@yaru)
19th February 2022, 8:58
I agree. Looks more similar to their previous car.
Oxnard (@montalvo)
18th February 2022, 14:00
It looks really vanilla. I’m also suprised they went for the narrow concept, as their PU is already not the most compact packaged one. But then again, Williams and McLaren seem to have a similar concept.
RandomMallard
18th February 2022, 14:04
That’s brave. Very, very blowy in that part of the world today. Seems like a very easy way to smash up the car before you even reach testing.
The other thing to note is that Mercedes often pull their “B-spec” trick at testing, where they show up to the first test with a fairly decent car, and then show up to the second test with a completely different, usually quite a bit better, one. I seem to remember them doing this a few times in recent years.
Coventry Climax
18th February 2022, 14:16
My sister has the same name as that bunch of wind. She’s a similar pain in the b… too. But the storm is gone in one or two days.
Tifoso1989 (@tifoso1989)
18th February 2022, 14:20
RandomMallard,
The main reason why they were able to that in recent years is that they have had the resources to do so. Mercedes do have a very powerful chassis dyno purchased and calibrated by Honda in 2008 specifically for their F1 operations. They can put the chassis with the full bodywork, replicate the air speed, air density, air temperature, altitude… and make it run 24/7 with 3 shifts.
Even in the first test, Mercedes manages to arrive with an iteration of their car worth weeks of testing and then in the second test and in the first race, they pull a complete heavily updated b-spec car. Now with the budget cap in place we already saw last year that Mercedes were able to deploy a heavily upgraded car only in Silverstone with minor upgrades an adjustments here and there in the rest of the season.
anon
18th February 2022, 15:15
I get the impression that you did not really understand the homologation requirements that were imposed last year that were designed to limit the number of changes that teams were allowed to make to their cars last season.
Tifoso1989 (@tifoso1989)
18th February 2022, 18:29
anon,
Even with those restrictions in place Mercedes managed to bring a heavily upgraded car in Silverstone. The reason by Mercedes’s own admission why the Silverstone package was the final major upgrade in 2021 was that they are shifting resources to the 2022 project.
anon
21st February 2022, 20:21
@tifoso1989 so, your argument is to simply repeat what you said before in the belief that it will somehow change something?
Boomerang
18th February 2022, 20:22
Don’t bother mate.
Dane
18th February 2022, 14:04
I used to always hate the teal and silver color combo but for once I think it looks good in these pics.
The Dolphins
18th February 2022, 14:07
Very different front wing from the one displayed at the car’s launch.
Matt
18th February 2022, 14:09
amazed they are getting any running in today, at what is renowned for being a windy circuit at the best of times.
Coventry Climax
18th February 2022, 14:11
It looks about 5 sec a lap – any circuit- faster than Ferrari’s flying saucer.
But who know, it’s only looks.
Preferably, a lot of the cars are more or less similarly fast, and allow for decent racing. Not that I really believe that, though.
hahostolze (@hahostolze)
18th February 2022, 14:18
Ugly, flat nose. Almost like out of a badly rendered video game.
Really nice wing.
Sensord4notbeingafanboi (@peartree)
18th February 2022, 14:22
Unsurprisingly looks a lot like the Aston, the shape of the nose the sidepod inlet, looks like a 2 week newer cad version.
MrBoerns (@mrboerns)
18th February 2022, 14:24
Not to mention the sidepod shape
Mach1 (@mach1)
18th February 2022, 20:03
Eh? It looks nothing like the aston.
The side-pod concept are total opposites. If anything this is nearer Williams or McLaren.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/876046265111167016/944029035615359006/unknown.png
amian
18th February 2022, 14:25
Apart from the beautiful nose, everything on this car is utterly ugly – from the snow plow wing at the front, thru the ugly sidepods, to the ugly rear wing. Oh, and the fron wheel winglets are an eyesore as well.
Sonny Crockett (@sonnycrockett)
18th February 2022, 15:38
I like to look at beautiful cars as much as the next person but aren’t cars designed with the aim of getting the maximum performance out of them?
Aesthetics are a happy coincidence.
petebaldwin (@)
18th February 2022, 17:42
@sonnycrockett – Well yeah, he didn’t say it was slow. That’s Toto’s job for the next month.
amian
18th February 2022, 19:11
@sonnycrockett
So? What’s your point?
Alex McFarlane
18th February 2022, 19:03
The wavy skirts/floor looks like a dog’s dinner but if it’s fast it’s fast.
MrBoerns (@mrboerns)
18th February 2022, 14:26
wasn’t the petronas thing supposed to end?
ian dearing
18th February 2022, 14:51
Just a line a few journos were peddling when they were trying to tie Mercedes/Ham to Aramco to get a good story.
Mr Fabulous (@mrfabulous)
18th February 2022, 14:32
Any idea what the chequer patches are on the inside of the front wing endplates? They’re not part of the launch graphics scheme. Some means of monitoring flex and deflection under load perhaps?
Mr Fabulous (@mrfabulous)
18th February 2022, 14:37
Also they’ve run George’s 6 and 3 so close together that they’ve ended up looking like the number 8
MrBoerns (@mrboerns)
18th February 2022, 14:40
RoGro to merc confirmed
aluminio
18th February 2022, 17:27
awful!!!
theRealMax (@millionus)
18th February 2022, 18:02
Seems to have a higher front wing like the AM.
ian dearing
18th February 2022, 18:35
https://twitter.com/MercedesAMGF1/status/1494699301435551748
David
18th February 2022, 18:47
Seems to be a very conservative interpretation of the rules – more like what Haas and Williams have thought up than Ferrari or Aston Martin.
But they aren’t fools at Mercedes and it will have been a deliberate decision to go with this concept. I expect the car to be near the front when the timing starts.