Russell: Copse won’t be flat in 2022 Mercedes F1 car at Silverstone

Russell joined Mercedes for 2022 after spending his first three years in F1 at Williams, but has spent the early part of this season working with the team to ease its car struggles.

Under the new regulations for this year, a number of teams have been struggling with cars bouncing and porpoising, with Mercedes being one of the worst-hit outfits.

It has limited the team to just five podium finishes in the opening nine races, leaving it behind Red Bull and Ferrari in the constructors’ championship ahead of this weekend’s British Grand Prix.

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Mercedes took a step forward with its porpoising issue when it brought an update to the Spanish Grand Prix back in May, allowing the team to unlock more performance from its car - although Russell and team-mate Lewis Hamilton were still struggling with the car bouncing through the corners.

“It all caught us by surprise when we went to Barcelona, and we weren't porpoising down the straight, but then we got to the corners, the two high speed corners - Turn 3 and Turn 9 - and were all bouncing through the corners,” Russell told Autosport.

“If you listen to our onboard during quali, or the Ferrari onboard, you hear them like ‘crush, crush, crush’ through the corner itself in Turn 3 and Turn 9. Now that was at 250km/h - Copse is 300km/h.

“So, it's not going to be easy to navigate. But I think there'll be a number of teams in the same boat.”

Russell noted that he was able to go flat through Copse from opening practice onwards in his Williams FW44 car last year, which was one of the slowest on the grid.

“I'm pretty confident I won't be doing that this year, even though we've got a substantial amount more downforce at high-speed,”