Mercedes, the constructors' champions for the past eight years, are nearly a second behind the leaders at the start of the season.
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Mercedes hopes to have upgrades ready for the next race in Miami, which they hope will start to address the car issues that have plagued them this season. Andrew Shovlin, trackside engineering director, said the new parts should show if they’re on the right track. Mercedes, the constructors’ champions for the past eight years, are nearly a second behind the leaders at the start of the season. Shovlin stated that the team did not expect to solve the problem overnight.
Lewis Hamilton, the seven-time world champion, has had a rocky start to the season. The 37-year-old has only one podium finish in four races and is currently seventh in the standings. George Russell, a teammate, has done slightly better, finishing fourth in the championship with one podium. Hamilton has already ruled out winning a record-equaling eighth drivers’ championship this season. The most serious issue for Mercedes is a phenomenon known as “porpoising,” in which the under-car airflow is disrupted, resulting in high-frequency bouncing on the straights.
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“A lot of the work that is going on in [the factory in] Brackley has been to understand the phenomenon and whether we can actually control it, whether we can engineer it out of the car,” Shovlin said.
“Now, being realistic we think this will be something we approach in steps rather than one big moment where the whole thing vanishes. But we are seeing encouraging signs. As I said, we are hoping to bring parts to the car soon, maybe even Miami where we can hopefully see progress on this issue,” he added.
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Porpoising forces the team to run the car at a higher ride height than it was designed for, reducing overall downforce and performance while keeping the bouncing to a minimum. A lower-drag rear wing is one of the new parts expected at the inaugural race at Miami Gardens on May 6-8. The hope is that by reducing the rear-end aerodynamic load, the porpoising will be less easily triggered.
Other parts, however, will be required to fully resolve the issue, which a number of engineers outside of Mercedes believe is caused by floor flexibility. Porpoising does not appear in either computational fluid dynamics or a wind tunnel, which are the two tools used by F1 teams to simulate aerodynamic behaviour and design and test upgrades.
