(Motorsport) Few would have predicted that Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton will fail to win a single race in the 2022 Formula 1 season but that is exactly what happened, resulting in the Silver Arrows finally missing out on the Constructors Standings after eight consecutive wins. Mercedes won a single race in the penultimate Brazil Grand Prix thanks to George Russell and finished the season strongly after a strong performance following the summer break. Mercedes have insisted that they don’t have high hopes for the 2023 season as the gap between themselves and Red Bull remains huge.

“I think the interesting thing is how we move forward from here. I think we’ve got to maintain that skepticism and be honest with ourselves that we were behind at the end of the year. And while I think that we’ve made good progress through the year and I am really pleased with the culture I have seen and the attitude, we will only see the return on that next year.” – Mercedes technical director Mike Elliott

“For me the perspective or the planning is not about the short-term, it’s not about a race, even a season or two or five. I would like this team to constantly develop to be chasing for race victories and championships every single year but not taking it for granted, not having any sense of entitlement and if I hear us talking it almost sounds like the complete disaster of all seasons… it felt like it and I think this is the right feeling. But we finished third in the Constructors’ Championship, we were very close to Ferrari, we won a race, we had 10 plus podiums.

“Whatever happens at the beginning of next season it’s going to be another building block for the success of this team. We are trying to be as transparent as we can. What we can promise is that all of us here in the two factories [Brackley and Brixworth], with the support of Germany, we are going to push flat out to have the best possible result and the same kind of scrutiny on our performance will help us going forward as human beings, as managers and also as a team.

“We came out at the beginning of the season with some wobbles on the power unit as well. We didn’t like certain aspects of the deployment or the drivability of the Power Unit. And whilst in a frozen environment you and your team were able to really add on performance, cope with the difficult environment of a bouncing car that was breaking your engine and still we were super reliable, and the engine was performing very well towards the middle of the season and the end.” – Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff

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