This morning the first and only testing session of 2023 has begun, with 10 cars running in Bahrain. Among the drivers selected to run during the inaugural morning session was George Russell for Mercedes, with seven times World Champion Lewis Hamilton announced to take his place for the afternoon session.
The British driver, in his second year with the German team, appeared pleased after his first real life approach to the W14, completing 69 laps and scoring the fifth fastest time of the session.
In spite of how early in the season it might be, a clear improvement on 2022’s car has been detected already: the lack of the “porpoising”, and the continuous bouncing around that Mercedes had significantly struggled with in the past season.
Team Principal Toto Wolff told media in Bahrain about the apparent lack of bouncing detected in the first testing session as a result of the work done during the winter break:
“It seems to be balanced in the right way. There’s no bouncing, which is good news, apart from that big bump at the end of the straight,” said, citing also Turn 12 as the only zone where they had “a little bit of movement”. However, Red Bull’s Horner and Ferrari’s Vasseur both commented on the “bumpiness” of that specific part of the track as well.
“It’s not at all as it was one year ago with the car bouncing like a kangaroo. Today we have on some part of the track before turn one, turn 12, it’s a bit more bumpy than it was before, but it’s a different issue,” Wolff remarked.
Photo: Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team
He is satisfied with how the first session of the day turned out for Mercedes: “We’re gathering a lot of data because that was important to correlate obviously after last year, and trying different things. So a productive first morning.”
By the time of the Bahrain testing last year, Mercedes already “knew that we were in trouble”, said Wolff on the intensity of the porpoising problem, and how early in the season the issue began affecting the W13 .
“The car was just bouncing around and we really weren’t able to drive it correctly, so that is very different.”
” I think we have a solid base now to work from and try to optimise the car, which we haven’t done yet. It’s really just finding out are there any areas that could be a real performance hindrance like last year with the bouncing. We’ve just got to work through the programme,” Wolff concluded.
