MERCEDES PLAYS IT SAFE IN MELBOURNE
Mercedes put its new low-downforce rear wing on hold for Australia, and it is expected to make its debut at either the Emilia Romagna or Miami GPS. To that end, the team elected to experiment in practice with the wing it used in Saudi Arabia, running it with and without the Gurney flap on the trailing edge to knock back some of the downforce in a bid to cure its porpoising problems. But in the end, Mercedes changed tack and installed the higher downforce wing it used in Bahrain, perhaps feeling that it offered more around the slower corners at Albert Park.
The team brought no ‘proper’ upgrades to the W13 as it attempts to understand its car back at base. “It’s going to take time and I think we just have to be disciplined and patient,” George
Russell explained. “We are so far behind and, because of the cost cap, we can’t afford just to throw things at it and ‘trial and error’ at race weekends. We need to trust the process and bring the upgrades when we have total faith and confidence they will do as we expect. It will be a number of races before we start seeing that.”