Mercedes buoyed by ‘no bouncing’ from brand-new W14 F1 vehicle

Twelve months on from its distressed test in Bahrain, where the German cars and truck producer was pestered by extreme porpoising, the group appeared in a much better location with its cars and truck.

And although lap times were mostly unimportant as groups focused their preliminary efforts on getting an early understanding of their vehicles, Mercedes group manager Toto Wolff stated early feedback from George Russell was appealing.

” It appears to be stabilized in properly,” stated Wolff. “There’s no bouncing, which is great news apart from the huge bump at the end of the straight.

” It’s a great beginning point. We are collecting a great deal of information since that was necessary to associate clearly after in 2015, and attempting various things.”

Asked by Motorsport.com if there had actually been any porpoising at all, Wolff stated: “No, we have not seen any bouncing.

” We had a bit of motion in Turn 12, the much faster one. It is not anywhere close to the degree that we had last year, and at this phase not efficiency restricting.”

The guarantee from Mercedes’ very first keeping up the W14 features Wolff confessing that the team understood extremely rapidly in 2015 just how much trouble it remained in with the porpoising.

” We understood that we remained in difficulty due to the fact that the automobile was simply bouncing around,” he discussed. “And we actually weren’t able to drive it properly. This is really various.

” I believe we have a strong base now to work from and attempt to optimise the cars and truck, which we have not done. It’s truly simply discovering, exist any locations that could be genuine efficiency limitations like in 2015 with the bouncing? Now we simply got to resolve the program.”

While all groups were dealing with far less bouncing concerns than in 2015, bumps on the Sakhir track at the end of the straights were activating some undesirable cars and truck motion.

However, the problem with the bumps was absolutely various from the porpoising qualities that showed to be such a headache in 2015.

Ferrari group principal Fred Vasseur stated: “It’s not as it was one year ago with the cars and truck bouncing like a kangaroo.

” Today we have some parts of the track– prior to Turn 1, and Turn 12– it’s a bit more rough than it was in the past. It’s a various problem.”