Toto Wolff warns Lewis Hamilton and George Russell’s cars could be wrecked at Imola GP

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

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Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has confirmed the team’s porpoising issues have damaged George Russell’s car. The Austrian confirmed the car was bouncing so much the car’s floor stay was affected.

The part helps stiffen the floors in a bid to stop the porpoising seen by the team. Russell was spotted ferociously bouncing on the run down to the Tamburello chicane with sparks pluming from the back of his car.

It is clearly the worst Mercedes have suffered with the issue which has plagued their 2022 season so far.

Wolff said: “Yeah that is not the worst. We had George bouncing, he broke the stay actually on the floor.

“We have to lift on the straight. I have never experienced in my life bouncing like this but it’s clearly not driveable.”

When asked whether Russell’s extra porpoising was down to a different car set up, Wolff claimed the teams were only running different tyre pressures. Russell was the leading Mercedes in FP1 with the rookie 10th fastest.

Meanwhile, Hamilton complained of grip on team radio and was only fast enough for 18th as the team’s miserable form continues. The Ferrari pair of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz was also affected by porpoising issues but this has not affected their pace.

Both drivers topped the leaderboard on Friday’s first practice session and go into the weekend as favourites. Wolff added: “Their porpoising looks a little bit different to ours, our frequency looks a little bit higher.

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“The main difference is when they hit the brakes their car stabilises, ours don’t. The Ferrari’s seemed to unlock that, everybody else is pretty much all over the place.

“Feedback that we are getting from Lewis and George is that there’s literally zero grip and that these gaps point to the tyres. When you are able to unlock that issue, you will do a jump and where that will end, I don’t know.”

In Friday morning’s press conference Hamilton was optimistic the team could turn around their fortunes soon. However, he said the Silver Arrows would not be bringing any major updates to Imola this weekend.

He said: “Ultimately it’s fundamentally still the same car. I know everybody in the factory has been working hard over Easter to try to bring event the smallest bits of improvement to the car.

“We don’t have anything that’s ground-breaking that’s going to change our result but I hope that we do move slightly forward.”

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