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Mercedes has a season to forget. Since the beginning of the season, they have not been able to impose their own pace or improve things. They aren't in the form they used to be in, and there is no shortage of concerns in the Mercedes camp.
Many experts wonder what the main problem is and why they haven't found a solution yet. F1 journalist Peter Windsor tried to explain the main reason for Mercedes' bad form. “If Mercedes knew the answer, they would fix it,” -he said, as quoted by planetf1.com ”You’re asking absolutely the million dollar question which the Mercedes people themselves have been unable to answer for 18 months.
I’ve tried my way to explain it and what happened at the beginning of 2022, completely new regs around which they will have to build cars, which were defined by wanting to make it easier to follow the car in front and more overtaking in Formula 1, it moved the whole way that downforce was generated from the wings to the underside of the car."
Porpoising problems
Porpoising has been a huge problem for them for a long time.
Their drivers Lewis Hamilton and George Russell complained about this problem. However, Mercedes seems to focus on the wrong things, on things that should not be a priority. Their rivals are gaining a huge advantage, while Mercedes is tapping in place.
“Mercedes along with several other teams never predicted or managed to replicate in the wind tunnel or on CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) obviously, the fact that the cars at a certain point, were going to have a massive amount of vertical oscillation and porpoising.
They just went gung ho for massive downforce on the car and were shocked, I think, I guess, when the car first ran and George [Russell] and Lewis [Hamilton] said “we can’t drive the car, there’s so much porpoising we can’t even see straight”.
Mercedes will have to make a huge effort if they want to improve this season and do what is necessary.
