© Steve Etherington for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd.
Mercedes released the 2022 Australian Grand Prix preview featuring comments from team boss Toto Wolff. You can read the full preview below!
“We are in a learning race and the first two weekends have shown we still have plenty to learn,” Wolff said.
“At the moment, our track performance is not meeting our own expectations, but everyone at Brackley and Brixworth is focused on understanding the problems and finding the right solutions.
“There won’t be a magic fix for the next race weekend, but we’re pushing to steadily bring gains over the up-coming races, to hopefully move us closer to the front of the pack. Until then, we need to maximise each opportunity and make the most of the package we have.
“So, there are various challenges ahead of us, but that’s something we relish and is when a team really shows its true spirit. Lewis and George are making an important contribution to the overall effort, providing feedback, spending time in the simulator and working together to help push us forward.
“Now we head back to Melbourne for the first time since 2020 and will be racing in Australia for the first time in three years – that’s too long for a city and country that are so passionate about F1.
“We’re looking forward to seeing the fans and the new track layout which promises more overtaking opportunities and faster lap times,” the Austrian concluded.
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Fact File: Australian Grand Prix
- The Albert Park track has gone through significant modifications since F1 was last there. The new layout is 24 metres shorter, which is expected to result in faster lap times.
- To summarise the changes, turns 1, 3, 6, 11 and 13 have all been widened to open up the apex and provide more space for overtaking. The biggest modification is the removal of the previous Turn 9/10 chicane, which has been turned into a fast, flat-out flick that leads onto the high-speed left-right sequence.
- The pit lane length in Australia is one of the shortest in F1, measuring just 281 metres, and it has typically been a very narrow pit lane. But for 2022, along with the other track changes, the pit lane has been widened to provide more space.
- By the time Formula One cars hit the track on Friday, it’ll have been 756 days since the sport was last in Australia – for the 2020 event that was cancelled before Friday practice – and 1,118 days since the last race at Albert Park in 2019.
- There’s an 11-hour time difference between Australia and the UK, making it particularly tricky for our placement students and engineers working in the Race Support Room (RSR) in Brackley and Track Support Office (TSO) in Brixworth. The support teams have access to a sleep schedule, to help shift over to a different time zone, but everyone approaches it differently.
- From Thursday onwards, the support teams in the UK will not only watch all the sessions live, but they’ll also join all the engineering meetings at the track remotely – making for some unique and unusual working patterns. For example, the race day shift will start at 2am and be wrapped up by mid-morning. And they will build up to the time zone in Melbourne over the course of the race week.
Source: Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team
