Mercedes appears to be nowhere near solving the chronic porpoising issues impacting its W13, with the bouncing phenomenon so severe in FP1 at Imola that it led to a floor stay rupture on George Russell's car.
Russell concluded Friday's single practice session which took place on a wet track P10, a massive 4.860s off the pace from the leading Ferrari of Charles Leclerc, while teammate Lewis Hamilton was a lowly P17.
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said that porpoising issues coupled with tyre warm-up problems undermined the reigning world champion team's practice session at Imola.
"We had George bouncing so much that he actually broke the stay on the floor," Wolff revealed. "You can’t drive – you have to lift on the straight.
"They are trained – I have never experienced bouncing like this in my life. But it’s clearly not drivable."
Mercedes as been working hard to try and mitigate its bouncing complications, but so far with very little success.
While the Brackley squad isn't the only team suffering from the ground effect issue, it hasn't succeeded in reducing its troubles without compromising its car's performance.
Ferrari on the other hand has been able to live with its porpoising predicament as it hasn't hindered the overall performance of its F1-75 car.
"Their porpoising looks a little bit different to ours," Wolff said. "Our frequency looks higher and the main difference is that when they hit the brakes, their car stabilises – ours not."
Wolff suggested that the massive pace deficit in FP1 between Mercedes and Ferrari was rooted in tyre temperatures in the precarious track conditions and therefore grip.
"The Ferraris seemed to unlock that, everybody else is pretty much all over the place," commented the Austrian.
"Feedback that we are getting from Lewis and George is that there’s literally zero grip and that these gaps point to the tyres.
"When you are able to unlock that issue, you will do a jump and where that will end, I don’t know.
"I think there will be quite some discrepancies in performance and you could see a team [really behind in qualifying later on Friday].
"We were five seconds off the pace – it’s not the car and not the driver."
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