1996 Formula 1 World Champion Damon Hill says Red Bull’s 2022 campaign can’t be compared to any seasons that Mercedes enjoyed in the turbo hybrid era.
Red Bull dominated the 2022 championship, winning 17 out of the 22 races staged across the year.
It picked up the Drivers’ and Constructors’ titles with several rounds to spare, after Ferrari’s early season challenge fell apart as the year wore on.
Mercedes endured a difficult campaign and only took a single grand prix during the campaign, which came at the penultimate round in Brazil.
Prior to 2022, it had unprecedented success in F1 since the start of the turbo hybrid era that got underway in 2014.
It was unbeaten in championships until 2021, when Red Bull’s Max Verstappen claimed his maiden title.
Speaking to Sky F1 at the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix last month, Hill says that he doesn’t see similarities between Red Bull and Mercedes’ dominant stretches.
“I was talking with Andrew Shovlin [Mercedes’ Trackside Engineering Director] about this before the race and I made that point it’s not quite as dominant,” Hill said.
“Their dominance is not quite as dominant as Mercedes’ shift to the hybrid era. And they were so dominant, they had to kind of underplay it a little bit because otherwise people would have ganged up on them.
“But Red Bull, you see at the end of the race, Ferrari wasn’t too far away from them at the end.
“We don’t know how much more they had in hand, but they were pretty close to Red Bull and also, of course, in Brazil, you had Mercedes being competitive in a different set of circumstances.”
Mercedes will once again run Lewis Hamilton and George Russell as its drivers next year, with Mick Schumacher assisting from the sidelines in a reserve driver role.
He’s obviously correct. Mercedes locked out the front row of the grid at most races for seven years, with both cars usually disappearing into the distance as soon as the lights went out.