Mercedes does not mention timing of car build-up elimination

After three races of the season, Mercedes is second in the Constructors’ Championship, but according to the Melbourne team their car was fifth in speed, behind Ferrari, Red Bull, Alpine and McLaren, and the gap to the leaders was one second per lap.

One of the problems that prevents you from getting more speed out of the car has to do with the build-up on straight lines and a lot of weight. In Melbourne, the team’s engineers installed additional sensors on Lewis Hamilton and George Russell’s cars, information that should help solve the problem, but this resulted in an increase in the weight of the car by one and a half kilograms. Also, Lewis and George’s cars were lined up differently for the race to test a few theories.

“We’ve done more than a hundred experiments with car settings, ride height, different valve positions and different rear wings, but so far we see no signs of a solution to the problem,” said Auto Motor und Sport, an unnamed Mercedes engineer. . quoted the words of an unnamed Mercedes engineer. “This is a tricky issue, but we’ve managed to reduce the bounce somewhat, so the riders are happy with the current situation. Strangely enough, Red Bull managed to solve the problem thanks to the update of the aerodynamic body kit.

The team has not specified the exact conditions for eliminating the car’s bouncing on the straights, but no major updates are planned for the next stage in Imola. Mercedes expects the quirks of the tarmac at Imola and the abundance of slow corners to partially level out the build-up naturally.

“Of course we will solve the problem before the end of the season, but it would be rude to say that we will be as good as Ferrari,” the Mercedes engineer continued. – For this we have a lot to do, and their car is good on any type of track. The best we can do at the moment is to reduce the gap between the leaders to half a second.”