Mercedes becomes first team to fire up 2022 F1 car

Less than a fortnight on from the final round of the 2021 F1 campaign, the Brackley-based outfit published a short video on Thursday revealing the fire up of the new W13.

The video showed staff at its factory overlooking the event, with Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff being kept up to date with developments via a live video link on a mobile phone.

The images offered no further clues about the design of the new Mercedes car, which Lewis Hamilton and George Russell will race in 2022.

While the pre-Christmas fire-up of the Mercedes car shows how far the team has progressed, teams are still set to wait until February to launch its definitive new challengers.

With an all-new rule set coming in to play, the rate of development of the new ground effect cars means teams will want to wait as long as possible before committing to their final designs.

With teams also mindful that rivals will want to learn as much as they can from the opposition, there will not be much incentive to release details too early in case others can copy the best ideas.

F1’s first pre-season test is due to take place at Barcelona in Spain on February 23-25, with teams expected to unveil their cars in the weeks before then.