Lewis Hamilton says there is “not a lot of difference” on Mercedes’ car for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix weekend following its struggles at the season-opening race in Bahrain.
Mercedes was visibly the third-fastest team throughout the weekend in Bahrain, but managed to score a podium through Hamilton following a late double-retirement for Red Bull.
The Brackley-based squad struggled during the weekend, with bouncing on the straights costing it time to its rivals.
As the Jeddah track is a high-speed circuit, Mercedes has introduced updates to its front and rear wings to reduce drag, as well as modifications to the cooling louvres.
And Hamilton says that the team has “things to try” this weekend to address porpoising, but admits that it is yet to fix its bouncing issues.
“A huge amount of work has gone on in the past three days,” Hamilton said.
“Very proud of my team for just keeping their heads down, staying focused, churning through the crazy amount of data there is every time we are out in the car and just trying to understand the issues that we have.
“We are aware of the problems that we have but in terms of what’s causing it, we’re just working through trying to figure that out and how we can rectify it without losing performance and ultimately, gain performance.
“There’s not a huge amount of time between races so there’s not a lot of difference here this weekend. But hopefully we’ll have some things to try.
“From a drivers’ perspective, that’s exciting. When you try something new and hoping that it unlocks a bit of performance.
“But the others are still very strong and as I said last week, it was great to see Ferrari back up there after a couple of difficult years.”
