Lewis Hamilton has hit back at his race engineers after Mercedes porpoising issues returned at the Monaco Grand Prix. Half an hour into the first practice session, the seven-time champion delivered an x-rated rant to his team in response to the latest issues.
He said: “The bouncing is crazy mate. “I’m f*** losing my mind.” Just seconds later, Hamilton’s race engineer asked whether Hamilton wanted to make any adjustments to try and counter the issues. Hamilton asked what work would be done but battled on to finish tenth in FP1.
During the session, the Mercedes star added: “There’s an incredible amount of bouncing.”
In an indication of how bad the problems were getting for the Silver Arrows, Hamilton even suggested he needed extra protection in the car. He explained: “Need elbow pads in this cockpit it’s bouncing so much.”
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Mercedes appeared to have got to grips with the porpoising issues which have plagued their season at last week’s Spanish Grand Prix. The Silver Arrows appeared to be closer to frontrunners Ferrari and Red Bull on pure pace.
This helped George Russell secure his second podium for the team with Hamiton recovering from a poor start to finish fifth. However, Mercedes engineers had warned the problem could well return ahead of the Monaco Grand Prix
Chief strategist James Vowels said: “I think it would be wrong to say the porpoising issue has disappeared. I think you still see it on our competitors and I’m sure there will be elements of it coming back again as we build on our understanding and the foundations we laid down in Barcelona.
“What I can say is we made a definite step, a step in our understanding and the deployment of what we put on track. And we can build on that, and the same could not be said about the first five races with the car we had there. We will move forward from where we are now but it will be a journey, it won’t happen overnight.”
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https://formulaone.news/mercedes/the-worrying-parallels-with-ricciardos-2021-f1-nadir
