Mercedes have admitted that they are yet to rid their W13 car of its porpoising problems, despite running multiple experiments during Friday practice at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit. The team have found themselves off the pace at the start of the new F1 season, behind both Red Bull and Ferrari in terms of car performance. Their biggest obstacle thus far has been finding a solution to porpoising, a downforce phenomenon that has been addressed successfully by most teams in the paddock. Mercedes are still struggling, however, and look set to continue to do so heading into qualifying and the race in Saudi Arabia.
Shovlin: We won't be troubling Red Bull or Ferrari
The team's experiments did see them cure some of the balance issues with their car, though, marking a positive step forward. Speaking late on Friday evening, Mercedes' Trackside Engineering Director, Andrew Shovlin, explained: "We tried a few more experiments to understand the bouncing issue here, some which made it worse, some which helped, but we don't yet have a solution to make the problem go away. "We can reduce this slightly for [qualifying], as it's affecting the drivers in a few of the corners and costing time. "Compared to Bahrain, the car balance is in a better place and, in terms of degradation, we're quite happy with what we have seen. Our single-lap [pace] still needs a bit of work, but we've got the [final practice] session to do that." He added: "Overall though, a reasonable day, but, clearly, we still have a bit of work to do before we'll be troubling Red Bull or Ferrari."
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