Mercedes out to prove turbo hybrid era dominance was not luck

Mercedes will be out to prove in 2022 that their dominance in Formula One was not by chance, according to James Allison. The turbo-hybrid era in Formula One, which began in 2014, has almost entirely belonged to Mercedes, with the German team winning eight consecutive Constructors’ Championships and seven of the eight Drivers’ Championships. Mercedes has maintained their form despite various regulatory changes, but a huge challenge awaits them in 2022, perhaps the most significant regulatory shift in Formula One history.

When the cars hit the track for pre-season testing in Barcelona, they’ll look a lot different, thanks to new regulations designed to bunch the pack up and allow drivers to follow closer for longer periods of time, increasing overtaking opportunities.

Of course, this poses a significant threat to Mercedes and Red Bull as Formula One’s dominant forces, but Allison, Mercedes’ chief technical officer, has a different perspective. Instead, he claims that the team sees the new rules as an opportunity to demonstrate that their dominant spell isn’t just luck.

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‘We see it as an opportunity’

“This year we see it as an opportunity to show that it hasn’t just been luck over the years,” Allison said speaking in a Mercedes YouTube video. “We haven’t merely stumbled into a formula, it’s often talked about as the turbo-hybrid era, as if we sort of stumbled into some God-given right to be dominant all these last seasons.”

“We see every regulation change as an opportunity to pit our wits against them and see whether we actually deserve still to be competitive, to see whether or not we can show a afresh that we have understood the physics behind the car, that we have tried to translate that into designs and concepts, that we then realise in manufacturing and then deliver to the track in a way that allows us to be competitive once more.”

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These new rules are more stringent than what the teams have been used to, so the engine, as Allison pointed out, can make all the difference. The last chance to introduce a new power unit is in 2022, after which there will be a freeze that will last until the end of 2025, with completely new PUs expected in 2026.

“The engine [is] one of the things that is less touched by the regulations,” said Allison. “Even there, the power unit has to be prepared so that it can be frozen for three years, all the goodness that you can possibly pack into it has to be packed into it now or forever hold your peace. Because after that changes will be very, very difficult to make real.”