The Brackley -based team has been faced with the challenge of getting their car to bounce down the straights without compromising performance since the first pre-season tests, and they have yet to solve the so-called porpoising.
Hamilton praised his third place in the last Bahrain GP that opened the course and defined it as “the best result that could have been achieved”, and, at the moment, they are behind Red Bull Racing and Ferrari.
Mercedes insists that once you know better what to do to solve the porpoising problem, you can unlock the full potential of your W13 .
But, despite extensive work in the two free practice sessions at the Jeddah circuit this Friday, Mercedes still does not believe it has found an answer to completely eradicate this annoying phenomenon.
Mercedes Track Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin admitted as much: “We tried a few more experiments to understand the porpoising problem here, some made it worse, some helped, but we still don’t have a solution to make the problem go away.”
“We can reduce it a bit for Saturday as it is affecting the drivers in some of the corners and it is costing them time.
While Mercedes remained behind Ferrari and Red Bull on pace on Friday (Charles Leclerc led Max Verstappen in both FP1 and FP2 in Saudi Arabia), Shovlin said the team goes into the rest of the weekend in better position than on the first date of the year.
“Compared to Bahrain, the balance of the cars is better and in terms of degradation we are very happy with what we have seen,” he celebrated.
“One lap down we still need a bit more, but we have the third session to fine-tune it. Overall though, Friday was a good day, but clearly we still have a bit of work to do before we can challenge Red Bull or Ferraris”.
Lewis Hamilton believes that one area where Mercedes needed to improve their performance was in their straight line speed, despite the team having opted for a lower drag rear wing this weekend.
The Briton said: “We still have a lot of the same problems that we had in the last race, but we are working through them.”
“It’s definitely a bit more difficult here with the high-speed corners, but the grip is really good on the track and we just need to find some speed on the straights.”
The photos of Mercedes in the 2022 Formula 1 Saudi Arabian GP
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