Mercedes thinks it can solve problems 'within two or three races'

Despite a third and fourth place in the opening race of the season Mercedes can only conclude that the team is way behind Ferrari and Red Bull Racing. The reigning world champion will do everything possible to solve the problems as soon as possible and still be able to participate in the battle for the championship.

Mercedes overwhelmed by amount of porpoising

In a new episode of the F1 Race Debrief of Mercedes, technical director James Allison explains what's wrong with the Mercedes. "We were quite overwhelmed by the amount of porpoising, which was quite extreme." Porpoising refers to the bumping of the car around the track. Something many teams struggled with, but Mercedes seemed to suffer from it much more than the competition.

According to Allison, the team is starting to get it under control, but it is still at the expense of the W13's performance. "Over the next few weeks we need to find improvements that will control the bouncing without throwing away the underlying performance of the car. That's an important question for the fate of our championship."

Lagging Mercedes smaller than feared

In Bahrain, Lewis Hamilton was nearly seven tenths behind Charles Leclerc in qualifying, George Russell as much as 1.7 seconds. Yet that deficit is not as bad as was feared at Mercedes, Allison admits. "I think the performance improvement that we managed to achieve from the winter tests to the first race is maybe not visible to the fans, and maybe not reassuring to the fans, but internally here in the team is reassuring."

Allison is therefore hopeful that the problems at Mercedes will be resolved soon and will still be able to compete for the championship. "We plan to fix these problems as soon as possible, hopefully in the next two or three races, so that our car can compete at the front and we can pursue our dream of championship success."