There are still four races plus one sprint to go to conclude this season. Nevertheless the paddock already from Suzuka has begun to empty with a part of employees, including some team principals who have returned to headquarters to take a closer look at how work continues for next season. Mattia binotto and Toto Wolff were not present in Japan, maybe even for see each other better on the matter Red Bull/Budget cap, but above all because all efforts are now concentrated on the foundations on which to design the 2023 car. Obviously treasuring 2022, the first year of the return of ground-effect single-seaters. If Ferrari has found a winning project on paper in the F1-75, Mercedes will have to reset everything and find an alternative project to that of the W13. Just in Austin the team from Brackley will introduce a final package of updates based on the development of the 2023 single-seater.
A lighter Mercedes
Red Bull and Ferrari have taken two different paths on the update front. The Maranello team preferred to adapt to the established programme, not having to intervene too much on the car, which in itself represented a good basis. Red Bull has been running a massive program of developments and the famous "slimming cure" to get closer to the ideal weight. Adrian Newey's creature slowly came out of the cocoon like a beautiful and sinuous butterfly, demonstrating a clear superiority especially in terms of aerodynamics. Mercedes, on the other hand, has taken yet another route. The problems arising from the design of the W13 without bellies they were many. Primarily straight-line speed performance, lower on average than Red Bull and Ferrari. Furthermore the W13 was very nervous, difficult to maneuver and suffered most of all from the problem of rebound.

The Brackley team did not immediately find a correlation between the solutions brought to the track and the simulations for this he struggled at the beginning of the season. “We lacked the tools, simulations and understanding to uncover the problems we created, with the way the car was developed.", explained Toto Wolff at the end of September. Months have gone by and Mercedes still hasn't won a race and it's increasingly difficult for that to happen but the progress achieved this year is especially useful for understanding which path to take for the next one, in which everyone will necessarily try to go back to the winning project, namely that of the RB18.
In Austin he will bring a lighter car and aerodynamic updates. The last update of the season, even considering that by now Red Bull and Ferrari – who most recently introduced a new fund at Suzuka – said they have no more plans for updates.
It goes on without making any predictions
Mercedes hope to reconnect with their two main rivals in this very last phase of the season, but it is not clear what benefits the updated package will bring to the American circuit. “It is our latest step in aerodynamic development and this will hopefully give us a little more performance", he has declared Andrew Shovlin director of trackside engineering at Mercedes. "With each step, we are learning more and more and that learning we can carry over into the next year. We also took some weight off components that will hopefully bring the car closer to the weight limit. It is very difficult to predict where we will be. In Singapore Lewis was close to pole position, but in Suzuka both cars had a big gap to the lead.".
“If we manage to take a step forward, we hope to be able to fight with Ferrari and Red Bull, but qualifying for us is the really difficult one to predict at the moment. On Friday, we will see what kind of problems we have and if we can solve them with the set-up".
Mercedes at Suzuka had opted for a more loaded wing, but Shovlin himself admitted that that move, in addition to making a double pit stop for the intermediates, compromised the race for Mercedes, especially for Russell who found himself in traffic.
Statement source: Autosport.com