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Although Mercedes put in the first laps with the W13 five days before pre-season testing, stormy weather at Silverstone meant they did not fully grasp the seriousness of the car’s porpoising.

Lewis Hamilton and his new team-mate George Russell put in the laps at the Silverstone circuit on February 18, the drivers braving high winds and rain from Storm Eunice as they had their first experience of the all-new car.

They packed up after that, Mercedes heading to Spain and the Circuit de Catalunya for the first of three days of pre-season group action.

They were in for an unwelcome surprise when they found their car bouncing all over the circuit.

“When we were at Silverstone it was the middle of a storm, we were in 70 miles an hour winds,” Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin explained to Motorsport.com.

“You often start with a car quite high for shakedowns and things, just to avoid damaging it, and then drop it later. And during that day we ran the car at a normal ride and started to see the issue.

“But it was only when we got to Barcelona you could actually look at it properly on a reasonable circuit and start to understand what was happening.”

What was happening was porpoising.

Billed as “perhaps the most complicated thing we’ve ever had to get our teeth into”, Shovlin said it initially went well – until it didn’t.

“That progress was pretty