Just like in the Bahrain Grand Prix, Mercedes F1 appear to be the third force on the field in Jeddah, with the Silver Arrows finishing 5th and 6th in Free Practice 2 on Friday followingnoon. The W13s still seem to be affected by porpoising.
Lewis Hamilton is the best placed driver in the German team and he is aware that there is still a lot of work to be done to progress in the hierarchy.
“It was a decent day, we still have as many problems as in the last race but we are working on it. It is more difficult on this circuit because of the many fast corners but the grip is very good here and we have need to find more speed on the straights.”
“We will work headlong tonight, we will analyze the data collected and try to be in the best possible position for qualifying.”
George Russell believes that it will be necessary to seize the slightest opportunity this weekend to compensate for the current delay of Mercedes F1.
“It’s great to be back at the Jeddah circuit, it’s extremely fast and rewarding for the drivers, but we’re still suffering from the same issues as last weekend in Bahrain. We know we have a lot of work to do. to close the gap with Red Bull and Ferrari.”
“We’ll try to take every opportunity that comes our way to score as many points as possible this weekend and we’ll give it our all tomorrow in qualifying. Anything can happen here so it’s important to be well placed.”
Andrew Shovlin, director of track engineering at Mercedes F1, hopes to be able to reduce the porpoising of the W13 by tomorrow.
“We did a few experiments to try and fix the bouncing problem, some made the effect worse, some helped but we still haven’t found the solution to make the problem go away. We can reduce it slightly for tomorrow because it affects our drivers and makes us waste time.”
“Compared to Bahrain, the balance of the car is much better and we were also happy with the degradation of the tyres. We still have to improve on one lap but we will have tomorrow’s session for that. Reasonable day but we clearly have work ahead of us before we can cause problems for Red Bull or Ferrari.”
