George Russell aims to maximise Mercedes’ points haul in Jeddah as porpoising problems persist at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.
The two Silver Arrows sat fifth and sixth in second practice on Friday, roughly half a second slower than pacesetter Charles Leclerc, who was also the only other lead driver to set his best time on soft tyres.
Once again, Mercedes’ main issue was the bouncing on the straights which is currently restricting their level of performance, as Lewis Hamilton explained in the build-up.
“I’ve not been given exact numbers but I know they are large, but I know that it’s the same for everyone,” Hamilton said of the downforce loss compared to Ferrari and Red Bull.
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“For those who have had to raise their car, there are much steeper steps compared to what we’ve seen in previous years and there’s lots of performance when you can reduce some of the steps by lowering the cars.
“The cars that are ahead of us have, for example, an incredible amount of low-speed downforce. I don’t know what the exact number is but I know that it’s not small.”
Ahead of the weekend, Russell also voiced concerns that porpoising could be a much bigger threat to Mercedes due to the Jeddah circuit layout.
“For us last week in Bahrain it was definitely not pleasant down the straights,” he admitted.
“The difference here is that there are no straights, the straights are bends. If we experience that, we could find ourselves in a dangerous situation but we have to wait and see, I can’t look into the future.”
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After the two sessions though, that fear appeared to be gone.
“It’s great to be back on the Jeddah circuit, extremely high-speed and exhilarating for the drivers, but we are still experiencing the same issues we faced last weekend in Bahrain,” said Russell.
“We know we still have a lot of work to do to close the gap on Red Bull and Ferrari. We’ll be fighting to maximise our opportunities for points this weekend and giving it our all tomorrow in qualifying.
“Anything can happen around here so it’s important we are in touching distance to capture as many points as possible.”
In first practice, Mercedes also looked to address their lack of top speed with a number of interesting rear wing configurations from mid-to-low drag.
“It’s been an okay day. We still have many of the same problems we had in the last race but we are working through them,” Hamilton commented.
“It’s definitely a little bit harder here with the high-speed corners, but the grip is really good on the track and we just need to find some speed on the straights.”
