Wolff: 'Hopefully we can give credit to the W13 in the years to come'

Mercedes has struggled after eight years of dominance every year to choose how to respectfully display each winning car at its headquarters, but it will be easier with the W13. Team boss Toto Wolff already has a spot in mind for the 2022 car.

In 2022, Mercedes fell through. The dominant team of the turbo-hybrid era made a poor start in the new era that began this year. The Wolff-led team had gone down the wrong road in the winter break after 2021 and had to make a tough step forward during last season. The team managed quite well and in the end Mercedes finished third behind Ferrari with a not too big gap. It is just that, according to Wolff, it is still not the best year to look back on.

Speaking to Motorsport.com Wolff said, "I think this car will always have a special place in our collection - very far back. I think that hopefully the next few years will do her justice, because the learning curve with that car was enormous." In 2022, the W13 was the ideal object for the team to learn from and, according to Wolff, the W13 was not completely worthless. Indeed, the W13 was the dominant factor in the Brazilian Grand Prix. Mercedes wants to honour the W13 by winning regularly again with its successors, though.

The W13's absent sidepods still seemed to be THE novelty at the start of the 2022 season and were viewed with suspicion by the competition. Fearful of the reputation of Mercedes, which came to the track every year with pioneering technologies, much was expected by the competition, but it soon became clear that Mercedes had gone down the wrong path. Of all the teams, Mercedes proved to have the most intractable porpoising problems and battled with them for most of the year. The upgrade package installed in the United States only seemed to make the W13 truly competitive again.