Mercedes believe Belgian Grand Prix bouncing for Lewis Hamilton and George Russell was not caused by upgrades

Mercedes is currently second in the F1 constructors’ championship and encountered issues with porpoising in their 2022 cars.

Mercedes attributes the bouncing of their car at the Belgian Grand Prix to track characteristics and setup, rather than the upgrades they introduced to the W14.

Lewis Hamilton and George Russell expressed their concerns about the recurring bouncing issues that affected their 2022 season, specifically at Spa-Francorchamps.

Mercedes made progress with upgrades in Formula 1, but are still behind Red Bull’s dominant RB19.

Mercedes took a gamble with their setup choice due to limited practice time during a Sprint weekend.

“We definitely had an amount of bouncing [last] weekend, both drivers were telling us that and we could see it in the data,” Mercedes chief technical officer Mike Elliott said.

“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 and in fact we had huge amounts of bouncing last year as did most teams.

“In terms of the performance, it definitely affects the performance of the cars because it affects the drivers’ ability to extract the maximum grip from the car, 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 wet race weekend, a weekend where we had no dry running up until the point we were actually racing.

“We will also 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.”

Mercedes has gained a significant lead over Aston Martin, and Lewis Hamilton is making progress in the drivers’ standings, closing in on Fernando Alonso.

Max Verstappen of Red Bull has extended his lead over teammate Sergio Perez by 125 points in the race for a third consecutive drivers’ title. The focus now shifts to making progress for the future.

Mercedes is planning to make further improvements to their W14 model, and the data they collect during the season will be crucial for their competitiveness against Red Bull.

“In terms of what we can expect from the second half of the season we need to keep pushing,” Elliott said.

“We need to keep pushing because we want to learn more about this car so we can take that into the winter and into the development of next year’s car but also we want that fight for second in the championship so we will keep bringing some upgrades to the car, keep fighting for that second position.”