Why Mercedes endured ‘a weekend to forget’ in Imola

It wasn’t because of porpoising. Instead, Mercedes had another major problem to contend with.

Mercedes are enduring a horrid start to 2022, but it’s not just because their car bounces up and down at high speed. In Imola, they couldn’t get enough heat into their tyres.

On Friday in Imola, Mercedes lost a 3486-day streak of having at least one car qualify in the top ten.

And while the team has notably struggled this year with porpoising this year, it wasn’t the primary cause of their lowly grid slots. Instead, neither driver could get enough temperature into their tyres.

“I think it’s been a bit of a trend since Bahrain,” George Russell said after the race on Sunday.

“We’ve progressively gotten a bit slower in qualifying.”

Tyre warmup problems are always most prevalent in qualifying because drivers normally have a single prep lap to get them into the optimum range.

But Mercedes say they need longer. This would mean any push lap they complete with just a single prep lap will not be representative of their true pace.

“We have a car that doesn’t generate tyre temperature sufficiently well and that has cost us today,” Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin said after Friday’s frenetic qualifying.

While this is likely not the only issue affecting the team, those lowly grid slots ruined the whole weekend for Mercedes, especially with Lewis Hamilton.

Their gap ahead to Red Bull and Ferrari was the largest its been all year. McLaren beat them to the podium.

Some would say Mercedes’ standing as the third fastest team is now in question.

George Russell did recover to fourth place in Sunday’s race, but that was mostly thanks to a superb start and a perfect pit stop, rather than a storming drive through the field.

“Ultimately we were starting far too low on the grid,” Russell said.

Lewis Hamilton never recovered from his poor qualifying.

Imola is a difficult track for overtaking and Hamilton just couldn’t make progress during Saturday’s sprint or Sunday’s Grand Prix.

“This was a weekend to forget,” he commented after his 13th-place finish on Sunday.

So what can be done about this tyre warmup problem, and will it keep happening?

One way around it in qualifying is doing more than one prep lap, but this has drawbacks. Doing more laps will soak up precious time - and a red flag can easily throw the tactic into disarray.

George Russell explained on Sunday that the issue was at its worst in Imola because of the conditions.

“This is the coldest race weekend we’ve had by far this year,” Russell said.

Similar conditions are not out of question for other rounds that will be held in Europe this year. Though, the European winter is coming to an end.