Mercedes identify reason for BOUNCING returning at Belgian GP

Mercedes

Mercedes identify reason for BOUNCING returning at Belgian GP

It was an issue that plagued the team throughout 2022 and it returned with a vengeance at Spa

Joe Ellis

Monday 7 August 2023 20:57

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Mercedes chief technical officer Mike Elliott has claimed that bouncing at the Belgian GP was not due to the team's new upgrades.

The Silver Arrows brought new components to the Spa sprint weekend which helped them to finish fourth and sixth, despite some porpoising fears over the course of the weekend.

Bouncing was an issue Mercedes had to solve in 2022, but it has not been a problem at any stage in 2023 until this race.

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Elliott revealed it may have been a track-specific issue, or perhaps a set-up quirk rather than the new parts causing major issues.

A question that needs answers

The Mercedes team cannot afford porpoising problems as they fight Aston Martin and Ferrari in the constructors' standings

"In terms of the performance, it definitely affects the performance of the cars because it affects the drivers' ability to extract the maximum grip from the car, it affects their balance and it affects their ability to get their braking points right," Elliott said, as quoted by Sky Sports.

"So that is something we will be working on for the future. The question we need to ask ourselves is, how much of it is just the circuit we were at in Spa and how much is to be found in setup because obviously, it was a wet race weekend, a weekend where we had no dry running up until the point we were actually racing.

"We will also take a really good look at the upgrade kit and make sure that we've not introduced bouncing with that but at the moment our belief is it is probably a result of setup or the circuit itself."