Mercedes "struggling to find that silver bullet" for its issues, says George Russell

Mercedes driver George Russell revealed the team is struggling to resolve its porpoising issues. The Briton believes they will not be able to make leaps to improve their performances immediately.

Speaking to the print media after the Saudi Arabian GP, Russell said:

“We definitely got some information. At the moment we are making baby steps. We need to make some leaps and bounds. We are struggling to find that silver bullet to resolve our issues. But I’ve got no doubt that when we do that, we will find a chunk of lap time. But as I said before it is easier said than done.”

Porpoising has been a major problem with the Mercedes W13, which both drivers have described as ‘undrivable’ several times since the season opener. Russell, however, believes that whenever his team does resolve the issues, they will be able to make up for the lost performance.

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Mercedes struggling to figure suitable ride height for performance of their car

The newly inducted Mercedes driver revealed that the team were unable to figure out the optimal ride height for their car to extract performance. Highlighting the porpoising issues being the prime focus at the moment, George Russell revealed Mercedes were primarily focused on developing the W13 based on those issues.

Revealing the struggles with his car, Russell said:

“We are going to start to develop the car around the issues. But we need to solve the underlying problem which is porpoising. All of these cars perform best at low ride height and we just can’t get anywhere close to what height they are running.”

In qualifying, Russell qualified sixth while his seven-time world champion team-mate qualified 16th. In the race, the drivers were able to make up most of their performance where Lewis Hamilton finished sixth while the team’s new recruit secured a fifth-place finish.