George Russell delivers verdict on decent qualifying despite more porpoising issues

George Russell appeared fairly content with his qualifying performance in Australia on Saturday but revealed that porpoising was still a big issue for the Mercedes car.

The porpoise effect has been something of a buzzword this season in Formula 1, with cars bobbing up and down at high-speed thanks to the ground effect that has been re-introduced to the new era of cars.

It seems safe to say that Mercedes have suffered with it more than most and that has impacted them negatively, with them unable to set the car up in its optimal configuration.

That said, Lewis Hamilton and Russell both qualified in the top six on Saturday in Melbourne and Russell, standing next to Lando Norris in an interview with Sky, seemed fairly pleased with the result but once again said porpoising was a big issue:

“It’s tricky, we’ve been quite aggressive with the set-up because 13 of the 14 corners are pretty fast but approaching that high-speed corner I was four-tenths off of this guy and was bouncing all the way.

“It’s tricky, we don’t really know what the best compromise is but ultimately we know we need to solve the issue and be like McLaren and Red Bull with no porpoising.”

Interestingly, the field appears to have been shaken up a little again with McLaren coming back inside the top ten and the likes of Haas and Alfa Romeo dropping out of it.

It’s clear all the teams are still working on their cars, then, and Russell believes it’s just so hard to call what the pecking order is behind the Ferrari and Red Bull cars:

“It’s strange because you look at McLaren and they were really off of the pace in Bahrain and now they’re flying so I don’t think anybody has a true understanding of what’s going on with these cars and these tyres. We’re on the