"It hadn’t occurred to us before in practice sessions" - Mercedes describes pit stop issue that left George Russell struggling for grip at 2022 F1 Imola GP

Mercedes’ head of trackside engineering Andrew Shovlin has explained the reasons behind their Imola GP pit stop error that left George Russell struggling with understeer on dry tires.

Shovlin said a malfunctioning electronic gun led to the team failing to change the aero balance on Russell’s W13 during the switch to dry tires, leading to a loss in performance. Speaking on the team’s Imola GP debrief video, Shovlin said:

“When we make an adjustment at a pit stop, we actually use an electronic gun that can put a pre-programmed number of turns in there. The issue we had with this particular stop was actually that both guns had got knocked as they went in on the front wing endplate, the front-wing endplates on these cars are much bigger and that had caused the gun to reset.”

Shovlin said the team overlooked the potential for such a scenario when the mechanics practiced the pitstops before the race. He said:

“It was really one of those issues that was a feature of the changes that we have made on the car, it hadn’t occurred to us before in practice sessions where we are trying pit stops or pit stop practice itself.”

Given that teams are still learning how to operate the new cars, Shovlin expects such common mistakes to occur in the future.

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Mercedes bouncing issues potentially result of “overconfidence”, claims F1 TV pundit

F1 TV pundit and sportscar champion Alex Brundle believes Mercedes’ struggles with porpoising might have been the result of them being overconfident in their ability to control a car’s ride height while developing their 2022 challenger.

Given that the Silver Arrows have always preferred a low-rake car in the past, Brundle feels the team might have assumed that they could easily fix any issues relating to that. Speaking on the Crash.net podcast, Brundle said:

“Mercedes were incredible with their rear ride height management throughout the end of last year and in many ways, they were in quite a good position, irrespective of lost aerodynamic testing time. They had run a low rake car all through the last year, they had practice in how to seal the floor and I think they are just over-confident in their control of the ride height, using the much-reduced suspension elements that are now available to the teams.”

Mercedes have been struggling to control their 2022 challenger from violently bouncing on the straights – which makes the car undrivable – without having to sacrifice too much performance. So far, the team seems to have made very little progress on that avenue.