The German manufacturer brought a host of updates to Miami, including a front wing with new concept endplates and a light-duty rear wing. Those adjustments led to George Russell posting the fastest time in the second practice session, although the Briton took a step back in qualifying for reasons as yet unknown.
In FP3 on Saturday, Mercedes decided to change the setup of Russell’s car, but for qualifying he reverted to Friday’s setup, which didn’t seem to deliver the same result and dropped him to 12th on the grid.
His teammate Lewis Hamilton finished sixth, and that makes Toto Wolff optimistic. The team principal always assured us that we would see the potential of the W13 when porpoising disappeared, and he believes that Miami is proof that Mercedes must keep its faith in the current concept.
“We think our concept has the potential to compete for victory in the front pack, but it’s also a sensitive concept,” said the Austrian.
“Once the car is in the right window it works well. It’s hard to find that spot, because our ground is so much more vulnerable than the other cars. We think this is the right direction.”
“In Barcelona we will collect more data and we will be able to compare the car with the one we had in testing. Then comes the time when we have to decide what we are going to do about next year. But you cannot just write off this season and focus on the next one. year, it doesn’t work like that. Because these rules won’t change. Every weekend we understand the car better, and we already indicated that this would be a weekend of experimentation.”
The W13 suffers from porpoising and this prevents the British team from getting the full potential of the car. That issue intensified throughout Friday, but according to Wolff , a change in settings has helped the team better understand when that effect comes into play.
“On Friday we were able to identify when the car had been set up correctly,” he continues. “The most important thing was to control the porpoising. At the end of qualifying, our drivers had a lot of problems with the rebound again, and this had a big impact.”
“It had its effect on the braking zones and it affected the tyres, so we finished twelfth and sixth, so it was a tough time for us.”
