George Russell explains that the porpoising of the W13 was not so horrible in a natural way this weekend in Baku. The Mercedes F1 driver admits that his team was subject to this because it wanted to drive as close to the ground as possible, so as not to lose performance.
“I think we have to stay open-minded about everything and approach things in a logical and analytical way, and I think nothing is ruled out at this stage” assure Russell. “And at the end of the day, we’re just trying to get a car that’s the fastest over a lap.”
“The porpoising hasn’t been that bad this weekend. We’ve had almost no issues, it’s just riding really low to the ground to get as much performance as possible. But as I I said, at the moment, we’re struggling to do that. We’re open-minded and nothing’s off the table.”
No consensus for changes
Russell understands that no one within the teams wanted to change things technically. Teams are not yet familiar with F1 2022 and none of them want to vote for modifications that would bring massive changes.
“It was completely understandable because every team understands and develops their cars according to a set of regulations and if you change something nobody knows what the consequences will be. And even us, I think we voted against.”
“And even now we want change but who knows what that change is. It’s just us riders who would like to have safer riding, especially when you’re going 300kmh between walls and you can barely keep the car straight.”
“I couldn’t even see my pit board, the car was moving too much. In Formula 1 we have the technology to solve this problem with the snap of our fingers, I believe. As I said, nobody is looking to take advantage of this situation, we are simply looking for a safer and easier solution.”