Mercedes motivation revealed as rivals 'scraping' for pace

Mercedes motorsport strategy director James Vowles has revealed the motivation the Brackley and Brixworth-based team has to return to the top of F1.

The Silver Arrows experienced a challenging year, failing to rebound from the pain of losing out on the 2021 drivers' title with Lewis Hamilton and instead falling to third in the constructors' standings as F1 ushered in a new regulatory era.

But George Russell's São Paulo Grand Prix victory sparked optimism of improvement from Mercedes ahead of the winter.

Excitement for Mercedes would have also been piqued by the fact Ferrari was almost pegged back in the race for second behind champions Red Bull.

Asked how the team was feeling for the new season, Vowles said: “I think just looking around the factory you can just see everyone is incredibly motivated by what happened last year.

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"More importantly, [the team is motivated] by wanting to get back onto that top step and consistently showing the world and other teams that we know how to win, we want to be back there and we have an opportunity to get back there across the winter.

“You never know what's going to happen.

"You have a number of teams that are fiercely doing what we are doing which is every single day scraping for a millisecond or more.

"But the reality is that we are in a strong position here in terms of learning that we can build on from last year and everything I see around is just everyone wanting to win and doing everything they can across the winter to do so.”

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