Mercedes’ recent problems, according to Lewis Hamilton, are unrelated to track characteristics, and the same porpoising issue will arise in Saudi Arabia.

When Formula 1 returns to Saudi Arabia this weekend, Lewis Hamilton feels Mercedes will still have to account for their porpoising issues.

The Mercedes W13 has battled with the problem, which is caused by the way the floor works with air under the new ground-effect aerodynamic philosophy, with the car clearly bouncing down the straights in Bahrain.

The problem appeared to be less severe throughout the duration of the Bahrain Grand Prix weekend, but Hamilton claims that porpoising will still happen at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit because it is inherent to the car rather than being triggered by track features.

“It’s definitely not track-specific, because we still had the problem in Barcelona,” he told media.

“It’s not as bumpy as here, but we still had the problem there. [Bahrain] is a bumpy track and we’ve had these longer straights.

“We anticipate in the next race – they have much longer straights there – we will have the same issue unless we fix it. And there’s a huge amount of people in the background that are working, incredibly intelligent[ly], around the clock, trying to come up with the right solutions.

“We don’t often jump the gun – everything’s thoroughly gone through before we make decisions.”

Mercedes porpoising causing a lack of downforce

Hamilton went on to describe how the car’s downforce is severely impacted as it bounces down the straights, citing porpoising as the primary problem preventing Mercedes from winning.

“It’s a huge issue. I’ve never experienced it with a Formula 1 car before,” he added.

“The cars are not made to be jumping up and down like that, so you’re gaining downforce, losing downforce, gaining downforce, losing downforce, every time you’re going up and down.

“We’ve made it a little bit smoother, so the past two weeks when we were riding, it was not comfortable for your lower back and your neck, but [it] has been a lot better, so hopefully it will continue to get better.”

When asked what aspects of the car he’d want to see rectified once the porpoising is under control, Hamilton replied the biggest deficit right now is the porpoising influencing the downforce rather than any other design flaw.

“Ultimately, it’s just downforce; because of this porpoising, we don’t have the downforce that we need,” he commented.

“That’s why we can’t get close to the other guys. They’ve got their car in a much better position, and they’re extracting – maybe not all the downforce – but more than we are. Therefore, they’re able to extract more lap time.”

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