© Steve Etherington for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd.
Lewis Hamilton and George Russell are running different floor configurations during the Bahrain Grand Prix free practice sessions, in an effort to solve Mercedes’ ‘porpoising’ issues.
At the Bahrain Grand Prix FP1 Mercedes seemed to be off the pace from their rivals, but it has to be noted that the team was using the session to try and solve the issues that came up in pre-season testing, especially the infamous ‘porpoising’.
Because of this Lewis Hamilton and George Russell were running different floor configurations throughout the practice session. For FP1 Lewis’ car has been fitted with a Z-shaped style floor edge, while George is running a more standard straight design.
After the first practice session Mercedes’ Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin confirmed the team looks at Bahrain GP practice as a continuation of pre-season testing.
“It’s a continuation of the testing,” the Briton said.
“We played with the ride height of the car this session. If we can see who is fast, and we see that Red Bull or Ferrari is faster, then we will start looking at their solutions, but for now, we are focusing on our own solution.”
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Shovlin also admitted that “the updates have not delivered everything we expected”.
The Briton continued by commenting on the team’s current pace.
“In terms of pace, we’ve got a bit of work to do, and we’ve carried that on from the test into FP1.
“We’re continuing to do experiments, but certainly on single lap, we were one step softer tyre than the cars we’d like to compete with doing a similar time.
“It’s pretty evident that there is something to do there. We’re learning with every day at the moment, and it does feel like we’ve got ground to catch up.
“But as long as we keep on with that learning, that’s the main thing for us,” Shovlin concluded.
Ahead of FP1 George Russell confirmed Mercedes is still searching for solutions to their problems.
“We are continuously trying things, but we don’t have a silver bullet at the moment that we think is absolutely going to clear our problems,” Russell said.
“But equally, we don’t know, the thing we try this afternoon might just be the thing that needs to be done to solve the issue.
“Or this might be you know, another three, four or five months of work to truly understand this.
“It’s always difficult during practice sessions, so you can’t try a million things at once. You have to do it analytically. Fingers crossed, we get it right sooner than later. But even so I think we’ll be in the mix.
“And there’s no reason why if we don’t do everything right, get the strategy right, make a good start that we couldn’t hold off a faster car,” George concluded.
