Russell explains why "bottoming" returned for Mercedes in Spain practice
Russell and a number of his rivals were vocal in their feedback about bouncing.
"Quite a lot of bottoming,” Russell complained in FP1.
He also reported: "I think the bouncing into turns three and nine are worse this run."
The Mercedes driver wasn’t the only one complaining about bouncing in the final sequence of corners.
Max Verstappen was also vocal: "Car's bouncing under braking into 10, and in the last corner.”
After Friday practice in Barcelona, Russell was asked about the complaints about “bottoming”.
“We were just pushing the ride height of the car to be honest,” Russell explained. “We solved it for the second half of the session by just lifting it a little bit.
“It was really bumpy through that final corner - just a bit sketchy through there - same for everyone. We will see what we learn tonight. Definitely we can find some gains.
“There’s a few surprises out there today but I am sure the story will be slightly different tomorrow and again on Sunday. As we know we score points on Sunday so that’s what we’re targeting.”
Friday practice gave Mercedes another opportunity to extensively test their new upgrade package which was introduced last time out in Monaco.
Russell admitted that Mercedes do not expect “to suddenly set the world on fire” with their new updates for this weekend.
“It’s only Friday. I think we’ll learn a huge amount and we’ll dig into the data tonight,” he added. “We know that we’re not Friday-specialists and we often take a bit of a step on Saturday and Sunday. We are where we are.
“A lot of people are bringing updates to the car. We weren’t expecting to suddenly set the world on fire. We just need to learn what we can from the info we’ve got and try to forward tomorrow.”
