Mercedes boss Toto Wolff says fighting the problems with its 2022 Formula 1 car was like "peeling layers of onions". The W13 proved to be Mercedes' worst F1 car since the W03 of 2012 with only one race win in the 2022 season as Lewis Hamilton went winless for the first time in his Grand Prix career. The octuple Constructors' champions slipped to third in the standings as the W13 proved troublesome throughout the campaign. Firstly it was affected by porpoising which tricked the team into believing solving this would improve performance. While it did, the porpoising was only masking a more serious, ingrained flaw with the concept - believed to be in the design of the floor which could not be rectified in-season. It is this continuous battle Wolff described as like "peeling onions".
Wolff in the kitchen
"We knew from the get go at the beginning [of the season] that the car was just not good enough," Wolff explained to media, including RacingNews365.com. "And I think we understood slowly but surely that as we peeled one layer of the onion [that there were more problems]. "You peel one layer of the off and you think you've sorted the problem, but then there is the next one and the next one. "We started to correlate where this car was really not [going] to be a good one and tied to concentrate on where we could perform well (such as Hungary, Mexico and Holland) knowing that more difficult ones like Abu Dhabi were damage limitation. "
An "absolute meritocracy"
Despite the drop off in performance, Wolff was not looking for sympathy from his fellow team bosses - believing Mercedes had got exactly what they had deserved. "It was our doing - last year wasn't - but we knew we got it wrong," he explained. "We are conscious that others did a better job - and this is an absolute meritocracy in how the season panned out, so that is okay."
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