George Russell reveals “bouncing” issue is back with Mercedes W15 F1 car

George Russell has revealed that “bouncing” is back with the Mercedes W15 - something that plagued the team previously.

Mercedes were hit hardest by the porpoising phenomenon back in 2022 - the bouncing sensation as a result of the new ground effect cars.

The team were forced to get on top of it after Lewis Hamilton struggled to exit his Mercedes cockpit at the 2022 Azerbaijan Grand Prix due to how violent it was - and the impact it was having on his body.

While Mercedes have taken a step forward with their 2024 F1 car, with a number of interesting innovations around the front suspension and front wing, there’s still work to do.

“I would say this year’s car is a totally different race car,” Russell told the media, including Crash.net.

“To the point that the things we learned from last year in the way we were setting the car up, we will need to approach it differently this year. So, there’s a lot to learn about this.

“It feels much closer to how a race car should feel. But the one area that we need to continue to work on is probably the bouncing that we’re seeing. We got caught up with a bit of bouncing last week.

“We were pushing the car really aggressively. But as I said, we’re dealing with a totally different beast this year, whereas 2022, 2023 they were both cut from the same cloth.”

All the signs, so far at least, have been positive for Mercedes, with Russell describing the 2024 challenger as feeling "like a race car".

“Yeah, 100 per cent from what we’ve seen so far,” he added. “Obviously, it’s one circuit, we’ve only had one and a half days each.

“Maybe we’ll have a surprise when we go to Jeddah next week but I’m confident that this is much more… it feels more like a race car. And I think we can now afford to be more aggressive with the setup, we can be more aggressive with the mapping of the car and where we put the downforce on.

“It felt like in the last two years, everything we did was a bit of a plaster that never solved the underlying issue that the car faced. And I think for the first time in two years, we feel like the numbers are backing that up.

“We saw all of the issues we had when we went back through the data W14 and the W13 had. And we’re definitely much more confident this is more of a race car.

“But there’s only one thing that matters is how quickly it goes around the track, and right now it’s not quick enough.”