"I don't think it's a silver bullet" - George Russell feels Mercedes is 'confident' of finding solutions to its problems

Mercedes had a rough start to the 2022 F1 season with mixed results in the fourth round of the championship at Imola. The team is now hoping for their first major upgrade at the inaugural Miami Grand Prix to significantly improve their results over the rest of the season.

In a press conference ahead of the race in Florida, George Russell revealed that the team has been learning and developing since day one. He emphasized that the Silver Arrows are finally getting to a point where they are confident about the future, saying:

“For sure, we’ve got a few things to try this weekend. I don’t think it’s a silver bullet, but it will give us a much better indication of the direction to take in future events and I think these past couple of weeks and months since day 1 have been vital into understanding the problem and developing the tools to be able to find solutions and I think we’re finally getting to a point where we feel confident that you know, in races to come, we might be able to solve it. But we’ll have to wait and see.”

Mercedes secured their first podium of the season at the Australian Grand Prix with a third-place finish for George Russell. The Brackley-based outfit currently stands third in the constructors' standings.

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"Trial and error" - Mercedes desperate for solutions for their porpoising troubles

Ahead of the Miami Grand Prix, Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff revealed that the team has been working to understand where they went wrong and what they can do to improve.

As reported by Autosport, the Austrian described every race weekend as a "live experiment", saying:

“I think we’re trying to find a solution that not only fixes the bouncing. You can patch up the floor and make it stiffer, but you lose downforce and at least make the car more stable, but that’s not the direction we’re going. Unfortunately, with no testing, every race weekend is a little bit of a live experiment. You can’t replicate the bouncing that we see on track in the wind tunnel. And therefore, it’s like in the old days, it’s a little bit of trial and error, what does it actually do in real life?”

Wolff went on to add, saying:

“Therefore, we are looking at a few directions where we believe they could help us to solve the problem long term without losing the goodness of the downforce by just lifting it up or patching the floor. There will be tweaks on the car this weekend where we think we can get a direction. But the performance of the car, we won’t unlock it from one weekend to the other.”

Mercedes have placed their hopes on the upgrades set to kick in at the Miami GP to turn around their performance for the rest of the season.