F1 2022 Season

Safety car was bound to happen at some stage. Perez in trouble now unfortunately.

I'm surprised at Hamilton's car. It's looking pretty dialled in compared to yesterday.
 
This proves how misunderstood Michael Masi was. You never know what you've got until it's gone.
 
It's exactly what I meant it as, which wasn't as a 'diss'.

Just a simple explanation as to why Merc are struggling now. They got ahead from the start of the last era and stayed ahead, which is still commendable, obviously. But unlike the other teams they never really had to innovate or problem solve or do a 180 on design ideas. Maybe except for last season where the FIA tweaked it back in favour of high rake.

It just shouldn't be as surprising to some as it is. The way even some pundits react to Mercedes being behind now you'd think there were drastic rule changes every season and Merc just kept pulling rabbits out of hats.
Sorry, but its still not as simple as you think it is. You don't make a design in year 1 and then just tweak it each year and simply stay ahead in this sport, Merc would have been working and innovating every single year, as evidenced for example by DAS. There are 9 other teams full of extremely smart people, you're saying Mercedes struck a design in year 1 and Merc simply tweaking year and year was enough to keep them ahead of everyone for 7 years. That's simply not credible, Mercedes would have been working hard each and every season to make improvements. That's why I'm so confident that Merc will get this car right, because over the past 8 years they've proved to be by far and away the best team for designing an F1 car. Even last year when the rules were targetted specifically to nerf Merc, by the end of the year they still had the best car.