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Mercedes driver George Russell revealed resolving porpoising might solve the majority of their performance issues. The Briton, however, believes the team is far from their ideal performance expectations and is still on a learning curve with their car.
Speaking to the press after the Saudi Arabian GP, Russell said:
“We are still learning so we are far from optimal. As I said if we solve the porpoising, that will cure 99% of our issues.”
Suggesting that porpoising was one of the bigger problems with the Mercedes W13, the Briton indicated that resolving it might help them make progress in terms of performance. However, Russell felt they were still on a learning curve and far from where they expected themselves to be.
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Explaining the issues on Lewis Hamilton’s car, the Mercedes driver said:
“On Lewis’ side of the garage, they worked more conservatively on the setup than we did. And that was the difference. As I set yesterday there is a fine line between getting the car in the right window. Even there are so many factors there when we are bouncing and sometimes we change the setup and we think it’ll improve, and it’ll make it slightly worse. It's seemingly a little inconsistent.”
Hamilton was unable to make it past the first session of qualifying and got knocked out after classifying 16th. The seven-time world champion had revealed that they made setup changes to extract more performance from his car before qualifying, however, had failed to succeed. According to Russell, trying different solutions and changes can sometimes resolve their problems or worsen them.
Mercedes' George Russell reveals there are several factors involved when it comes to their performance deficit
According to the Silver Arrows team’s new recruit, the W13 has many factors contributing to the porpoising problem. Russell believes more power makes the problem worse in qualifying and DRS complicates it further during the race.
Describing the nature of their porpoising problem, Russell said:
“There are so many factors that have played between mechanical stiffness of the car, stiffness of the floors, the design of the floors, tyre pressures. There are so many factors at play that contribute to make it better or worse for us. Engine mode as well. The fast you go, the worse it gets so it makes it harder for qualifying. Because if you turn the engines up, its maximum power we go quicker on the straight, causes more downforce and causes more porpoising. So we almost need to preempt this issue. And also in the race, when you have DRS closed you have more downforce than you do with the DRS open and that is another factor we need to consider.”
Mercedes have struggled for the second consecutive weekend since the season commenced and are far from where they finished at the end of the 2021 season. The young British driver also hinted that their problems might carry on throughout the 2022 season.
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