Mercedes positive about ‘clear route’ towards the top after porpoising nightmare

Lewis Hamilton was in the mix for the race victory at Silverstone on the weekend as he secured a second podium finish in a row.

It was in stark contrast to the Mercs’ struggles while “fighting to survive” earlier in the year, particularly with the porpoising issues that the team believe they are getting on top of.

Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin is quoted by Motorsport as saying: “In the first few races, we were literally just sort of fighting to survive. And the drivers were fighting to survive with a car that was incredibly difficult to work with.

“But we did a decent job of scoring points, actually, and picking up on the opportunities when others were unreliable.

“Barcelona was useful for us because we had something that wasn’t bouncing around on every circuit that we went to. But clearly a recent run of three street tracks highlighted another weakness and, to be honest, we’re just going through it: looking for the problems, and then we’ll try and apply our engineering skills to solving them.

“But I would say that the route that we want to take now is becoming increasingly clear. And that’s encouraging from a development point of view.

“This [Silverstone] update is the first one along the line that we started to create in Barcelona.”