Mercedes will give everything to be back "fighting properly for a championship" in 2023 – but still have hopes of usurping Ferrari in this season's standings.
The Silver Arrows have been a step behind the Italians and Red Bull all season, after getting their car development for his new era wrong. As a result, Lewis Hamilton and George Russell have been unable to fight for the sort of results to which Mercedes have grown accustomed.
Neither of them has a race win to their name in 2022, and that doesn't look likely to change with Hamilton himself admitting Max Verstappen and Red Bull look "unbeatable". Ferrari, on the other hand, may be there for the taking – but their priority is definitely to be able to have grander ambitions next year.
"We want to try and fight Ferrari for that P2 position, we want to try and win a race this season or multiple races ideally but most of all we want to get ourselves back on track so we are fighting properly for a championship next year," said the team's technical director Mike Elliott.
"That's not any disrespect to our opposition – we've got fantastic opposition – but that's what we really need to do because we want to be back there, we want to be challenging for championships because that's what we are about.
"“I think we've had some good races and we've had some not so good races, but I think what's really encouraging for me is that the understanding that is coming from the simulation work we do and the understanding that is coming from the wind tunnel.
"It is allowing us to work out why our performance is going up and down, what we need to do to get back into the fight right at the front and what we need to do over the winter. I think that are the key things. What we need to do over the next six races of the season is we just need to do what we always do which is race as best we can."
Ferrari's cars have been far quicker than Mercedes this year, but the W13's greatest weapon has been its bulletproof reliability, even if it doesn't have the pace they would want. But the Italians have had costly power unit problems, augmented by strategy errors which have seen them throw a lot of points away in 2022.
The gap between Mercedes and the Italian team above them stands at just 35 points. With six races remaining this season, Toto Wolff declared "it's all to play for" in the push for second place in the constructors' championship.
"We just need to do the best every single weekend and see whether we come out second," said the Austrian. "Maybe [it would soften the blow] a bit, but there [are] more blows that we are ending up 30 seconds behind the leader, and that is the gap that we need to catch up."
