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Mercedes is planning to add aero upgrades to its cars for the Bahrain Pre-Season Test. George Russell warns not to look at the lap times too much.
Mercedes is scheduled to add numerous upgrades to its car ahead of the Bahrain Pre-Season Test. One of the problems the team is trying to deal with is the ‘porpoising’, which has affected all 2022 cars on the straights at the Barcelona Pre-Season Track Session.
George Russell says bringing upgrades is normal procedure at this point in testing.
“I think we’ll see it with all the teams,” the Briton said.
“We’ve got this massive regulation change. We’ve all arrived in Barcelona with our best estimate of where we need to place the car.
“But obviously, there’s a lot of things on track that were quite different to what some people may have expected. So, we need to go away and try and optimise from the limitations we’ve had.
“I think we’ll see some changes come Bahrain, and throughout the season. I’m sure the development slope is going to be pretty rapid for everyone.
“Whoever can get on top of that the quickest and most efficiently will be the ones on top come the end of the season.”
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Although Mercedes had the fastest times at the Barcelona test, Russell says it doesn’t mean much at this point.
“It’s been incredibly intriguing and for all of us there’s been a lot of unexpected issues, which have been quite visible.
“Some teams have it quite well under control, and some clearly do not. Lap time wise, I don’t think it’s representative at all.
“We were obviously on the softest compound of tyres, and the C5 is a very strong tyre around this track.
“So even though we were on the top of the timesheets, I wouldn’t read too much into it. I think the Ferrari and McLaren were looking incredibly strong.
“And I think we’ve got some improvements to be made as we’re not fully happy with the balance of the car and the limitations we have currently. But at the end of the day, it is only testing. We’re here to learn.
“And I think we’ve made some good experiments this week and got a good indication of the direction we need to go in,” concluded the Briton.
