Mercedes Chief Pleased With W14 Balance - "No Bouncing"

Toto Wolff has reflected on the first test session in Bahrain.

After a challenging 2022 season where they faced problems with excessive porpoising, Mercedes appears to have come a long way. The team seemed pleased with their car during this first session of the pre-season testing this year. 

While lap times are not the only measure of a team's success during testing, Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff expressed optimism about the feedback from George Russell. According to Wolff, the initial feedback from Russell has been positive, which bodes well for the upcoming season.

Wolff explained, according to Autosport:

“It seems to be balanced in the right way. There's no bouncing, which is good news apart from the big bump at the end of the straight.

“It’s a good starting point. We are gathering a lot of data because that was important to correlate obviously after last year, and trying different things.”

When asked if they had noticed any bouncing yet, Wolff responded:

“No, we haven’t seen any bouncing.

“We had a little bit of movement in Turn 12, the faster one. But it is not anywhere close to the degree that we had last year, and at this stage not performance limiting.”

Seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton has taken the W14 out on the track of the second test session this afternoon and so far it seems he is having the same experience as his teammate. There are two more days of testing ahead of the 2023 season opener next week on 3-5 March.