Mercedes make honest assessment over title-losing F1 mistake

Mercedes has conceded it "simply didn't do a good enough job" in adapting to F1's ground effect regulations as the rules cycle prepares to end.

The Brackley team was coming off eight consecutive constructors' championships heading into the all-new era in 2022, but fell back to a distant third in that season's standings, claiming just a single grand prix win. 

The team had gone radical with its W13 design, featuring the 'zero-pod' concept, where the sidepods were reduced to tiny inlets, but this, and other design mistakes, doomed the project, which was eventually firmly abandoned at the 2023 Monaco GP, where a more conventional car was introduced.

In the ground effects era, to date, Mercedes has won just seven grands prix, but is on course to end on a high by securing second place in the 2025 constructors' championship to McLaren, and is 32 points clear of Red Bull and 36 ahead of Ferrari with three rounds remaining.

Reflecting on the mistakes made with the design of the W13, trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin was grateful that the experience had made "better engineers" out of the team.

"For us, [the rules cycle] was not very enjoyable and was very frustrating," Shovlin told media, including RacingNews365. 

"It has made us better engineers, and there's a lot that we've learned over the course of the regulations as we've had to reflect on the fact that we simply didn't do a good enough job.

"Even if you assume your start point is actually difficult to avoid, because so much became evident when the [2022] car started running, we can still look at subsequent decisions that, if we had our time again, we would have done quite differently.

"So from our side, we wouldn't score ourselves highly, but the regulations have thrown up some good racing, and what you've got now is a situation where the field is getting so close, we don't really see a lot of overtaking anymore.

"There was more variety in the early days of these regulations, and we're looking forward to the next challenge and getting Mercedes back to the front."