© LAT Images for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd
After the Belgian Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton said that the W14 is ‘bouncing’ again. Mercedes’ Chief Technical Officer Mike Elliott gives the team’s view on the issue.
Throughout 2022 Mercedes has been struggling with their car ‘bouncing’. In 2023 the phenomenon has mostly been eradicated, but it returned at Spa.
In Mercedes’ Belgian Grand Prix debrief video, the team’s Chief Technical Officer Mike Elliott discussed the issue.
“We definitely had an amount of bouncing this weekend,” Elliott said.
“Both drivers were telling us that and we could see it in the data. We could also see an amount of bouncing on the other cars and I think some of it is the nature of the circuit at Spa.
“In fact we had huge amounts of bouncing last year, as did most teams. It definitely affects the performance of the cars because it affects the drivers’ ability to extract the maximum grip from the car.
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“It affects their balance and it affects their ability to get their braking points right. So that is something we will be working on for the future.
“The question we need to ask ourselves is, how much of it is just the circuit we were at in Spa and how much is to be found in setup.
“Because obviously it was a weekend where we had no dry running up until the point we were actually racing.
“We will take a really good look at the upgrade kit and make sure that we’ve not introduced bouncing with that but at the moment our belief is it is probably a result of setup or the circuit itself,” the Briton concluded.
