F1 News: Mercedes Powertrain Director Admits Engine Freeze Was Huge Hurdle For Team

"Became the challenge of the season"

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has sat down with technical director Mike Elliott and managing director of Mercedes powertrains, Hywel Thomas, to reflect on the 2022 season. They all agreed that the engine development freeze made the development within the year "interesting".

The team had a difficult 2022 season beginning with major porpoising problems. Once they managed to get the porpoising under control, they found many other issues with the W13 cars. The team did manage to make some late season improvements which saw George Russell take the win at the Brazilian Grand Prix with Lewis Hamilton in second place. 

In a recent video uploaded by Mercedes F1, Wolff, Elliott, and Thomas, explained that an engine freeze applied from the start of the 2022 season until 2025. This meant that they were not able to make any hardware changes to the power unit. Adding to this were changes in the rules surrounding fuel consumption. 

Thomas then had the challenge of making significant improvements to the engine without changing the hardware. He explained:

"When we went to the track, there was some disappointment and we also saw things we could definitely repair, but we knew we couldn't do that in the hardware. In fact, that has been our way of developing the car for the last years."

Thomas continued:

"How were we supposed to handle that? That became the challenge of the season; we were looking for a way to improve the engine while the hardware was frozen."

Thomas emphasised how it is impossible to develop the engine and chassis separately as they need to be aligned "beautifully". He explained:

"You can't develop those two aspects separately anymore. You have to align the power unit even more beautifully with the chassis now."

The team are looking ahead to the 2023 season and working on being in a position to come back to be able to fight for the championship once again.