Toto Wolff offers thoughts on Mercedes sidepod debate

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff has said that he is unconcerned about the debate that is rumbling around the design of his team’s new car at Bahrain testing.

The 2022 Formula 1 season is set up nicely to be full of real intrigue with all-new regulations coming into the sport and the drama and debate that was so rife in 2021 already appears to be carrying on into this year.

Indeed, Mercedes have caused quite a stir in Sakhir with them revealing a radical new design to their W13 car, with the sidepods basically non-existent which could drastically improve performance if it reduces drag.

It’s an approach that no other team has evidently thought of, either because it simply eluded them in the design process or because they didn’t think it would be legal within the FIA’s new technical regulations for 2022, and that naturally means it’s the talk of the paddock before a Grand Prix has even been run.

Naturally, the question over legality comes up when a team produces something so unique and out of the box but, with the new regulations coming in for 2022, the FIA has been particularly stringent in its monitoring process of car design, and Toto Wolff has said that the governing body has been updated throughout the process with the W13, leading him to believe there isn’t an issue.

Speaking in Bahrain at the lunchtime press conference on Thursday, he explained:

“The process is very clear. When you go in a specific development direction, you have the FIA part of it. You’re exchanging CAD and you’re making them part of the process.”

Of course, Wolff is hardly going to sit there and say Mercedes thought they’d get away with a fast one and it’s a fair cop but, at the same time, it does seem pretty clear the FIA were liaised with