(Motorsports news) With the help of regulation changes made over the winter, the phenomena that dominated Mercedes’s 2022 season have mostly faded with this year’s W14. But the issue was brought up by George Russell and Lewis Hamilton, the latter of whom said it was a “huge amount” of trouble.

Given that Mercedes and its F1 competitors only had the wet FP1 session in which to fine-tune their vehicles, and no alterations were permissible after that, according to the sprint event rules, Elliott says the team will have to assess whether it was circuit-specific or connected to set-up.

The other potential explanation, which Chief Technical Offier, Mercedes, Mike Elliott feels to be less likely, is that recent changes to cars have had an effect. He stated in a Mercedes team video, “We definitely had a lot of bouncing this weekend. “Both drivers told us that, and the evidence supported their claims. We noticed considerable bouncing on other cars as well, and I believe that some of it is due to the nature of the Spa circuit. In fact, most teams including us experienced significant bouncing last year.

“In terms of performance, it definitely affects the performance of the cars because it affects the drivers’ ability to extract the maximum amount of grip from the car, it affects their balance, and it affects their ability to get their braking points just right.”  

He said, “So that is something we will be working on for the future,” in reference to the team’s research. It was obviously a wet race weekend, one where we had no dry running prior to the actual racing. The question we need to ask is how much of it is just the circuit we were at in Spa and how much is to be found in setup in the Mercedes’s car. However, at the time, we believe that is likely a result of setup or the circuit itself. “We will also take a really good look at the upgrade kit and make sure that we have not introduced bouncing with that,” the company said.

Elliott pointed out that the shortage of practice time may have also contributed to the fact that Mercedes’s drivers Russell and Hamilton chose different aero systems for their races at Spa. Elliott remarked, “Like every race weekend, we prepare by putting in some time in the simulator. “A good deal of work to try to get the overall balance requirements of the vehicle correct, figure out what degree of downforce we want to run, figure out where we’re going to place our mechanical balance, our aero balance, just to get ourselves roughly in the appropriate window.

So, before the Spa race weekend, the two drivers completed that program, and in George’s case, he believed that the larger rear wing gave him more options. He chose to begin the race weekend with that because he liked the way the vehicle handled it. 

“Typically what happens is the two drivers get together over the course of the race weekend, but this weekend was pretty wet, there was no dry running, and both of them were happy with the car they received so they elected to stay where they were,” the author writes.

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