Lewis Hamilton and George Russell’s Mercedes issues identified by F1 legend

Mercedes: What’s gone wrong at the F1 and can they recover?

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Lewis Hamilton and George Russell face bigger issues at Mercedes than first thought, according to F1 legend Emerson Fittipaldi. Fittipaldi pointed out that McLaren have the same engine but that the Silver Arrows but did not look as fast as them at the last race.

Lando Norris secured a podium at Imola, finishing ahead of Russell in fourth. Fittipaldi has warned something else needs to be improved on the Mercedes before the British pair can challenge for wins.

Speaking to VegasInsider, he said: “If you compare Mercedes to McLaren, they both have the same engine. But McLaren is running much faster than Mercedes.

“That means it’s not the engine, but also the chassis. There’s something there to be improved, for sure.”

The team has blamed its porpoising issues for much of its performance concerns this season. However, Ferrari also has also appeared to suffer from porpoising issues but has not let it affect the car’s pace.

The Silver Arrows’ power advantage is also not as strong as in previous seasons with Hamilton and Russell unable to make ground up on midfield teams during Saturday’s sprint race. Hamilton was stuck behind a DRS train of midfield runners and could only manage 13th in the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.

Mercedes are expected to bring some new updates for this weekend’s Miami Grand Prix and again for the Spanish Grand Prix at the end of May.

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Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff is more excited by the team’s Barcelona updates but is confident they could make a step forward this weekend.

He said: “We’ll try something in Miami and then again in Barcelona. We had much less bouncing with our presentation model in the winter than the second specification that we then took to Bahrain.

“The data comparison between the two cars should bring us a step further.” Andrew Shovlin also suggested new upgrades are on their way in the coming weeks.

He explained: “Realistically, we feel that this is something we need to do step by step rather than one big overhaul to fix the problem, but we’re seeing encouraging signs. We’re hoping to bring new parts to the car as soon as possible, maybe in Miami, and hopefully see some progress on this issue.

“A lot of people are struggling with this and we know that raising the car’s ride height is one way to alleviate the problem.”

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