George Russell expressed optimism that Silverstone should suit Mercedes’ W13 but cautioned that the squad is “facing different issues” at each event.
Mercedes has struggled to understand its W13 this season, having initially been plagued by porpoising, while more recently it has striven to combat the car bottoming out.
Russell has still managed to classify inside the top five at every grand prix but Mercedes holds only third in the standings and is poised to be dethroned after an eight-year streak.
“I’d like to think the high-speed nature [of Silverstone] should suit us more but there’s no guarantees,” said Russell.
“Every single track we’ve gone to it has sort of thrown an unknown at us, we’re facing different issues every single race we go to, I’d like to think we’d be more competitive but I don’t know.
“We solve one issue and we fall into another trap. Porpoising has been solved but then we do run the car close to the ground and we’re hitting the ground quite aggressively, there doesn’t seem to be any sweet spot at the moment.”
Russell outlined that in terms of ride height “we’ve run high, we’ve run low, and the performance hasn’t improved or decreased and the stiffness or bottoming hasn’t really changed surprisingly.
“Even when you run high you have different effects, when you run low you have different effects, it’s a really tricky iteration of car to get on top of.”
