Mercedes keen to unlock ‘aerodynamic goodness’ as Miami updates touted

Mercedes hopes to start unlocking the “aerodynamic goodness” from its W13 as updates for the Miami Grand Prix are touted.

The Brackley-based team is having their worst start to a season in the hybrid era with 77 points their lowest points total after four races since 2013.

At the heart of their problems is porpoising, when the car bounces down the straight at high speed. At Imola, the issue was so severe that George Russell suffered from back and chest pains, later admitting the level of porpoising was “not sustainable for the drivers”.

But should Mercedes be able to fix the issue, team boss Toto Wolff is confident the full potential of their car will be unleashed.

“I think if we get on top of the porpoising we would unlock much more in terms of performance on the car,” he said.

“If we don’t get on top of that, there are more conventional development paths that we have not yet taken. I want to give us the time to really properly take such a decision.

“We very much believe that the science we are putting in at the moment will help us to, in effect, run the car lower,” the Austrian added.

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“It is where we believe we have all the aerodynamic goodness, but we haven’t been able to unlock it because of the bottoming of the car.

“If we are able to get on top of that, that means there’s quite some lap time we can find.

“If not, we need to have another idea.”

Currently, Mercedes, and other teams, are having to run their car at a higher ride height than intended to try and limit the porpoising, which means many other performance parameters are also of their expected window.

“A lot of the work that is going on in Brackley has been to understand the phenomenon and whether we can actually control it,” trackside engineering chief Andrew Shovlin explained.

“Whether we can engineer it out of the car or is there an aerodynamic solution that we can apply to the car that will make this problem go away.

“Now, being realistic we think this will be something we approach in steps rather than one big moment where the whole thing vanishes, but we are seeing encouraging signs.

“We are hoping to bring parts to the car soon, maybe even Miami where we can hopefully see progress on this issue.”