Mercedes won't dismiss ditching 'zeropod' design - Wolff

Mercedes

Mercedes won't dismiss ditching 'zeropod' design - Wolff

Mercedes' porpoising struggles continued in Miami despite a positive result

Sam Hall

Wednesday 11 May 2022 05:00

Toto Wolff has revealed he "wouldn't discount anything" when asked if Mercedes could still revert back to its Barcelona launch spec of the W13.

George Russell and Lewis Hamilton finished fifth and sixth for Mercedes at the inaugural Miami Grand Prix despite the team once again struggling with porpoising.

The team had appeared to get a handle on the issue on Friday with Russell topping the order only for the 24-year old to qualify 12th after a small set up change was made.

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Asked if, the team could still switch back to its original, more conventional specification from the Barcelona test despite the progress made with its Miami upgrades, Wolff replied: “I wouldn’t discount anything.

"But we need to give all of our people the benefit of the doubt that have produced great race cars in the past and we believe this is the route to go.

“But Barcelona definitely is going to be a point in time where we are able to correlate with what we have seen in February and gather more data.

“I am also annoyed that I am always saying the same thing a lot – gathering data and making experiments. But it is physics and not mystics and therefore you have to unpick the bones.”

Mercedes launch spec "slower on paper'

Mercedes' 'disappearing sidepod' - or 'zeropod' - concept leaves far more of the floor exposed than the designs of its rivals, something that is believed to be exaggerating the team's porpoising problems.

“If you walk through the grid, you can see that our floor edges just stick out much wider than everybody else’s and that, of course, gives it much more scope of possible instability and I think that is where our concept varies," Wolff explained.

“Clearly, the Barcelona launch car is much slower on paper but we need to find out how we can make the current car work predictably for the drivers.”