The Porpoising Mercedes Formula 1 Car is Back
Photo from Autosport.com
The famous issue with the Mercedes Formula One car is back. The porpoising or otherwise known as bouncing occurrence that struck Mercedes during the 2022 season, is now reported be back the Belgium Grand Prix at Spa.
This bouncing may have been one of the leading causes of why Lewis Hamilton did not catch Charles Leclerc for a podium. At this time, the Mercedes team does not exactly know what is causing the bouncing and are still keen on finding the root of the problem. The Mercedes Chief Technical Officer, Mike Elliott had this to say:
"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.
"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."
Over the summer break, Mercedes plans on figuring out the cause and deciphering if it was a circuit-specific issue. Toto Wolff does seem optimistic and confident in his development team and alluding to the new upgrades introduced at Spa to be the cause.