Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula 1 team has disputed claims that their 2022 F1 car, the W13, failed the FIA side-on crash test a few days ago.
The 2021 Constructors champions denied that their Mercedes W13 failed the FIA crash test, claiming that the car passed the mandated tests “a few weeks ago.”
On Sunday, the Italian version of Motorsport.com stated that Red Bull and Mercedes’ 2022 preparations had been hampered by their cars failing the FIA crash tests.
Despite the Red Bull RB18 failing its frontal test, chief designer Adrian Newey did not worry about requiring a stronger design for Mercedes, which did not pass their side test.
Mercedes tried a “extreme solution” for the design of their new automobile, according to the report, and now must “turn to a plan B” when it failed the test.
The W13, unlike Ferrari’s 2022 car, “had not yet obtained the FIA stamp” of approval, according to the newspaper. However, Mercedes has refuted this claim insisting they got done with the test several weeks ago.
“We completed homologation several weeks ago,” a spokesperson from Mercedes told GPBlog.
This year’s Formula 1 regulations were completely overhauled, ushering in a new era with all-new vehicles centered on ground effect aerodynamics, which the sport’s executives think would result in more competitive racing.
In a recent interview, Mercedes chief technical officer James Allison warned that “one or two” teams will get the new regulations “very badly wrong.”
“Everyone in our team, and everyone in every other team, will have done our level best to try to find a design and an approach that will be a happy match to this new regulation set,” Allison said.
“We’ll all get to find out together at the start of this season, in the races that unfold from there, exactly how that shakes out.
“I would imagine, given that the cars are so new and so different, that one or two cars on the grid will have got it really badly wrong, and they will have a terribly painful year.”
“I would imagine that all of us to some degree will have will have left things on the table that we just didn’t anticipate,” the Mercedes boss continued, “and we will look at other cars and think ‘oh, why didn’t we think of that?’
“Then we’ll be scrambling around to try to get that idea onto our car as fast as possible, so that we can claw our way, from whatever position we land in that first race, forwards.”
