Formula 1: Mercedes in the dark over Lewis Hamilton’s true pace in 2022 car

Mercedes are playing catch up with Ferrari and Red Bull after the opening two races of the season

Mercedes are unsure what the true pace of their car is and whether they will be able to challenge for victories even after they fix their porpoising issues.

Lewis Hamilton and George Russell have managed just one podium finish between them in the first two races of the season – which came in a third place for Hamilton at the opener in Bahrain.

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But they are clearly significantly slower than the Ferraris and Red Bulls, an issue that has been put largely down to their porpoising struggles.

However, the team’s trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin insists they may still be playing catch-up once that problem has been resolved.

Speaking to The Daily Express, he said: “That’s probably priority number one because that’s ultimately preventing us from running the car where we’d like to run it for optimum performance.

“What we don’t know is, if we could just magically make that issue vanish, where would we actually be in terms of car pace. Is the car fast enough or not? And it’s very difficult to answer that question.

“If you can solve the problem with the porpoising you don’t need to give up the downforce. The issue is that most teams, I think, to a greater or lesser extent, are trading one for the other.

“We did try a cutaway floor in the Bahrain test. We tried it on Friday in Bahrain. We think what we ended up with was overall a better solution. But at the moment we’re considering what we’ve done as very much sticking plasters on the problem, and we need to fix the problem in a more effective way that doesn’t just drop performance.”

Despite their early season struggles, Mercedes still sit second in the constructors’ standings because of Red Bull’s reliability problems, primarily in the Bahrain Grand Prix.

The 2022 Formula 1 season continues this weekend with the Australian GP.