The Silver Arrows have had a much improved season this year, picking up three wins as they appear to have finally grasped the new era of regulations.
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Lewis Hamilton and George Russell have been largely starved for success over the past two campaigns after Mercedes’ interpretation of the 2022 changes quickly proved ineffective.
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The errors made by the team in their design philosophy was a topic mocked by Alex Albon, who drives for the Mercedes-powered Williams team.
Mercedes’ 2022 design errors were a key talking point when Red Bull took the titles
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Mercedes’ historic streak of eight consecutive constructors’ championships came to an abrupt end as Red Bull dominated the 2022 and 2023 seasons.
Mercedes debuted the ‘zeropod’ concept in testing two years ago, an innovative measure which ended up attracting attention for all the wrong reasons.
The design reportedly aced wind tunnel testing, but did not correlate to on-track performance.
That correlation issue seems to have been resolved midway through 2024, a year which started off with Mercedes facing a similar fate to the two previous seasons.
A second career win for Russell in Austria was followed up by an emotional Hamilton victory in Silverstone, before Mercedes’ first one-two of 2024 was denied when Russell was disqualified post-race in Belgium.
Alex Albon poked fun at Mercedes’ ‘zeropod’ concept
Those breakthrough moments may have undone some of the painful experiences over recent years for the drivers and team personnel, but it has clearly done little to affect the memories of those on the outside of the team.
In the latest Grill the Grid video, where drivers were challenged to point out a mistake in F1-related images, Albon could not resist cracking a joke at the expense of Mercedes.
When presented with a photo of the 2024 drivers alongside their cars at testing, Albon quipped: “The mistake was running a zeropod concept!”, referencing the 2022 design disaster.
The Williams driver did not manage to spot the actual mistake, which was the missing shadows on Stake F1 Team pair Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu.