Wolff: 'Porpoising cost Mercedes six months of F1 car development'

Mercedes spent most of the 2022 Formula 1 season troubleshooting but was rewarded at the last minute with its first win of the year in Brazil. According to Toto Wolff, this did cost the team around six months of development.

It was widely assumed that Mercedes, like the other F1 teams, would have solved the problems with porpoising after a few races. However, the team continued to struggle with it much longer than expected and could only minimise the problem by raising the car so much that performance was sacrificed significantly.

Wolff: 'Mercedes has lost six months'

Mercedes only managed to largely master the problem later in the year. "We have lost six months of development because we simply had to solve the porpoising problem before we could get the performance back," Wolff explained according to FormulaRapida.net.

He continued: "Whatever we added in terms of downforce, the drivers couldn’t feel it, the car became even more unpredictable and bouncing got worse." Wolff fears this has left his team too far behind rivals at Red Bull Racing and Ferrari. "Considering six months delay in putting performance on the car is something that will be very difficult to catch up against Ferrari and Red Bull," he said.

"We have started a 100 metre sprint 10 metres behind everyone," the Mercedes team boss added. However, he is confident that his team and the organisation around it have what it takes to "run faster" and catch up.