After the good weekend at the Spanish Grand Prix at the Montmeló circuit, Mercedes seemed to have regained some of their form, they even came close to fighting for victory with George Russell, and in Canada they managed to add a new podium with Lewis Hamilton.
At the meeting in Montreal, the silver arrows garnered a total of 27 points that served to definitively escape in the constructors’ classification of the middle zone, but more than the result, what filled the German garage with satisfaction were the sensations of its two riders with the long runs, especially with the hard tyre.
With this rubber, Hamilton and Russell approached the fastest, those who were in first and second position, Max Verstappen and Carlos Sainz. However, despite the fact that they are getting closer, Mercedes is aware that they are in no man’s land, as the team’s chief executive, Toto Wolff , assured when the race ended.
George Russell, shortly after crossing the finish line in Canada, pointed out that you are still a long way from achieving the goals set at the beginning of the season. Porpoising has been reduced on the W13 , but many other issues remain, such as the car’s stiffness and lack of overall downforce, which greatly affect the Germans’ performance.
“With the car, when we solve a setback, another of a different nature immediately appears. The rebound effect has been solved, but then, when we lower the height of the car, we hit the ground in a very aggressive way,” said the Englishman. “At the moment, it doesn’t look like we have a strong point.”
“We’ve raced the car higher and lower, but the performance hasn’t gotten any better or worse. we observe another,” George Russell explained. “Trying to adjust the car several times is not an easy thing for this reason.”
“The car is very stiff in general,” continued the Briton. “The porpoising was not so bad in Canada, but we were still hitting the asphalt like in Baku, in a less extreme way, just because of the characteristics of the circuit and the speed, but the problems are far from being solved.”
Toto Wolff himself has cited the ” swallow in spring ” precisely to compare the moment the team is going through. The W13, although it suffers less rebounds, continues to suffer from this movement, but insists that there are other reasons that limit the performance of Mercedes.
“Our performance in Canada? A swallow does not make spring, and we already saw that swallow in Barcelona, but it had to fly to another place,” said the Austrian. “We have to be careful, on Friday we didn’t have a good pace, on Saturday, in the rain, we improved, and in the race we were better”.
“Sometimes we were among the fastest cars, and in the second stint both Lewis [Hamilton] and George [Russell] were on pace with the leaders. It’s motivating to see that, the work we’re doing is to get back to racing with the first,” acknowledged Wolff.
“From what we have been able to see, the rebound of the cars has been reduced considerably, and I think the drivers have adapted,” said the Mercedes boss. “The current cars are stiff, you just have to look at for example the Alpines how they come off the curbs, they have a lot of rebound, and that’s what the drivers are complaining about, so we have to work to understand how to reduce it. .
The rigidity worries the silver arrows, but it is not only that. As Russell pointed out, when one problem is solved in the W13, another appears immediately after, and downforce is one of them.
“I think we will have to try to improve the load on the car, more airflow, and do it with a car that is not as low as we had anticipated. The direction is clear, you can see that the cars are getting higher, and here is where we need to find performance,” Wolff said.
