Mercedes’s struggles have continued into the third weekend of the 2022 season in Australia and Lewis Hamilton says any changes they’ve made are making ‘no difference.’
Both drivers were noticably frustrated with their machinery after Practice this morning at the redesigned Albert Park Circuit.
Speaking to reporters, Hamilton said: “It was a difficult session.
“Nothing you change on the car makes a difference at the moment, that’s the difficult thing.
“You get in very optimistic, and you make changes, and then it doesn’t seem to be wanting to improve.
“We made some changes going into P2; P1 was better and P2 ended up being a bit harder for me. I don’t know, it’s just a tricky car.
“I don’t think it will be tricky to find our way back, it’s just there’s not a lot we can do. This is the way it is, so we just have to drive with it.
“That’s the frustrating thing because you’re trying to push, you’re trying to catch and even when you do a decent lap, it’s 1.2 seconds down, so it’s difficult.”
The seven-time world champion was over 1.2 seconds off the pace of the Ferrari of Carlos Sainz at the end of P1 and only managed to clock the a fast enough time to go 13th – and was over 1.5 seconds down the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc.
His team-mate, George Russell, was on the same page after a first taste of the weekend in the W13 after he fail to make the top 10 fastest times in either session.
Russell also echoed what Hamilton said: that different set-up changes made in a bid to solve their issues have not been working, and also complained of porpoising this morning.
“We’re not in a position where we want to be, there are quite a few mid-field cars ahead of us and we’re quite off the pace from the front,” Russell said.
“We’re definitely porpoising pretty bad into Turn 9. It’s probably the most severe I’ve experienced, but it’s just something we have to deal with for the time being.
“We believe that’s the fastest way around the track, but maybe it’s not.
“We need to keep digging into the data and understand how we’ve gone from left, right and centre with the set-up and all resulted in a similar outcome. We need to try to get on top of things and understand why.”
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