Toto Wolff ‘wouldn’t discount’ Mercedes reverting to first Bahrain test spec

With Mercedes still unable to eradicate their porpoising problems, Toto Wolff says he “wouldn’t discount” the team reverting to the specification they ran at the opening Bahrain test.

That means a W13 with fatter sidepods.

Mercedes ran two very different sidepods during the two pre-season Bahrain tests, the first being an almost standard bulge and the second being their zero-pod.

They opted to race the zero-pod design in the opening five races of this championship but it is said to be hindering the team’s efforts to resolve their bouncing.

As such Wolff admits in time they could revert to the fatter sidepods.

“Well, I wouldn’t discount anything,” he told The Race, “but we need to give all of our people who have produced great racecars in the past the benefit of the doubt, and we believe this is the route to go down.

“Barcelona [the next race] is definitely going to be a point in time when we are able to correlate with what we’ve seen in February [in the first test there with the old concept] and gather more data.

“I’m also annoyed by always saying the same thing a lot: gathering data and making experiments. But it’s physics and not mystics.”

The Mercedes motorsport boss does, however, believe that old spec is “much slower on paper”.

We maximised the result that was possible today and both drivers did a good job to score good points for the Team – but we have to feel for Lewis who had even more bad luck with the Safety Car.

Onwards to Spain. And another chance to make a step forward. 👊 pic.twitter.com/qwKeeLD41R

— Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team (@MercedesAMGF1) May 8, 2022

For now, though, the team will stick with the current spec with its zero-pod design.

“We’re not looking at the lady next door and if we like it more or not, because it’s still good,” Wolff added.

“As a matter of fact, we need to understand – before you make a decision to switch to another concept – where did this one go wrong?

“What is…