Mercedes has scope to "experiment" in their pursuit of a "silver bullet" to unlock the W13's performance.

The 2022 Formula 1 season has begun with the rare sight of the Brackley-based team fighting amongst the midfielders as they trail the pacesetting Ferraris and Red Bulls.

At the heart of their problems is porpoising, and though George Russell claims some progress has been made, it is not as the rate he nor the team wants.

“We’ve definitely got the information, we’re continuing to learn, but at the moment we’re making baby steps and we need to make some leaps and bounds and we’re struggling to find that silver bullet to resolve our issues,” he said via Motorsport Week.

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“I’ve got no doubt when we do that we will find a chunk of lap time but as I’ve said before it’s easier said than done.”

The Briton though also admits the W13 may just be simply lagging behind their rivals in terms of pure performance, with straight-line speed and high-speed cornering two weaknesses identified.

“P5 was the maximum but the car actually felt very nice to drive,” Russell told F1 TV after the Saudi GP.

“We know what we are lacking and that is downforce. I think we got the car in a nice window this race and was pushing the car as hard as I could.

“That was probably the most physical race I’ve experienced in Formula 1. It was cool to have the body pushed to the limits, that concentration throughout 50 laps on a street circuit like this at high speed.

“But I want to be doing this fighting for victories, not P5 all by myself.”

Russell's position, 30 seconds behind race winner Max Verstappen and 24 seconds clear of Esteban Ocon in sixth, is seen as an accurate barometer of Mercedes' true pace.

And trackside engineering chief Andrew Shovlin believes that advantage over the midfield can be used to the team's benefit.

“Well, we’re under no illusions what that performance gap is [to the leaders] and in Jeddah, it was ultimately a bit bigger than in Bahrain,” he said.

“We’ve got quite a lot to find both in qualifying and in the long run if we want to challenge the Ferrari and the Red Bull cars.

“However, behind us, it looks like we have a bit of margin to that midfield. We need to do a good job to be ahead of them, but we have a bit of margin and that buys us a bit of breathing space to allow us to experiment on the weekends, to try and bring solutions to lift the level of performance of the car.

“Everyone is working very hard to try and understand the issue and bring solutions and we are going to be doing that in a phased way over the next few races."

The first stage is understood to be a new rear wing coming for the Australian GP in an effort to address the significant deficit Mercedes has on the straights.