Andrew Shovlin has conjectured his view that his team of engineers will face a much steeper learning curve when they attempt to start learning about the new generation of Formula 1 cars.

The new regulations have meant that all ten teams have had to dramatically change the way they construct their cars, with Formula 1 technical mainstays such as bargeboards being shown the exit after 28 years on the grid.

Mercedes will also have to deal with the added problem of spending within a budget cap set at $140m, which will then shrink to $135m in 2023 and beyond.

However, Shovlin and his team of engineers are relishing the challenge ahead of them as they attempt to understand the new generation of Formula 1 cars.

“2022 is going to be an exciting challenge for the engineering group, trying to understand the effects of those changes, very big aerodynamic changes, the whole aerodynamic behaviour of the car has been reconsidered in the regulations to try and make them more able to follow closely and to give us better racing. We’ve also got very different tyres, so all of that needs understanding, and we can start that work here in Brackley on the simulator, but as I’ve said, it’s really trying to understand how the new cars will generate performance, we’ll run them quite differently to the cars that were used to. “

“With such wide-ranging changes to the technical regulations, theirs a lot of learning were going to have to at the circuit, and when you get a new car, you’re always learning, trying to understand how to get it into the sweet spot how to get the drivers completely happy with the balance for that all-important lap in Qualifying but the learning curve here is going to be much steeper.”

“We’ll be finding real lap time hopefully with every run, but certainly, with every day of testing, we’ll hopefully have moved that set-up another stage. That’s gonna carry into the racing. So with every new track you arrive at, you’ve got to go through that process of understanding the limitations working on the fine-tuning, but there’s going to be an enormous focus, especially in those early races of trying to understand where that performance is trying to get the car in the best possible condition to try and make as fast as possible in qualifying and the race.”

Unlike last year there will be two winter test sessions before the season opener in Bahrain, with the first test being held in Barcelona on the 23rd-25th of February before the teams head to Bahrain for the second and final test session on the 10th-12th of March, a week before the opening race of the season held in Bahrain.

With limited testing time before the season’s curtain-raiser in Bahrain, Shovlin is of the opinion that this year’s testing sessions will be crucial due to both drivers having a limited amount of time in the new car.

“Winter testing is going to be vitally important. There’s only six days. So that’s three days per driver to try and really learn everything there is to know about these cars. There’ll be a lot of work put into the correlation side. So making sure that the car that you’ve put out on track is matching all of those simulations have you got as much performance on it as you hope to have on it. And then a big element of trying to understand the tires. And then in parallel with that. We’ll be exploring different set of directions, so trying to get the cars into the correct working window.”

“Get them into that sort of sweet spot for the drivers so they can really attack the lap in qualifying. And doing all of those together in that short period that we now have for testing is going to be a big, big challenge. And the teams that get it right are going to be able to carry that learning into those early races giving them an advantage, and being reliable is going to be super important.”