23 February 2023 , 15:04
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Mercedes were not suffering from porpoising during the first session of pre-season testing, a delighted Toto Wolff confirmed.
There were many reasons why Mercedes struggled so much during the 2022 season, but one of the more noticeable problems was the bouncing. A new generation of Formula 1 cars brought that unfortunate side-effect, and some teams got on top of it more quickly than others.
The Silver Arrows were among those who took longer than most to fix the problem without compromising too much on performance elsewhere. Those pictures of Lewis Hamilton holding his back in agony after a particularly bumpy ride in Baku were among the most enduring images from last season.
Naturally, a close eye was being kept on the W14 as it came out of the garage on Thursday morning with George Russell behind the wheel. TV cameras didn't seem to show too much evidence of any porpoising, and team boss Wolff confirmed that was the case during the lunchtime break.
He told reporters: "It seems to be balanced in the right way. There's no bouncing, which is good news... apart from that big bump at the end of the straight.
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"We had a little bit of movement in Turn 12, the faster one. But it is not anywhere close to the degree that we had last year, and at this stage not performance limiting.
Porpoising was not a problem as George Russell took the Mercedes W14 for a spin in Bahrain (Getty Images)"We're gathering a lot of data because that was important to correlate obviously after last year, and trying different things. So, a productive first morning.
"We knew that we were in trouble [in 2022 testing], the car was just bouncing around and we really weren't able to drive it correctly. So that is very different.
"I think we have a solid base now to work from and try to optimise the car, which we haven't done yet. It's really just finding out are there any areas that could be a real performance hindrance like last year with the bouncing. We've just got to work through the programme."