Wolff: Saturday experiments produced 'bouncing kangaroo' W13

Toto Wolff says the set-up changes experimented by Mercedes in Saturday's final practice session in Miami were not fruitful and resulted in the team's W13 "bouncing like a kangaroo".

Ahead of this weekend's round of racing Florida, Wolff said that Mercedes had identified new directions to solve the chronic porposing issue impacting its new-generation car.

The Austrian warned that improving Mercedes' Silver Arrow would require a trial-and-error process. While Friday's performance – with George Russell topping the timesheets in FP2 – appeared to show progress, Saturday's trial was clearly an error according to Wolff.

"I think we've seen a performance in FP2 that was real," said the Mercedes F1 boss. "We were able to put it in a sweet spot, and today in FP3 we were completely off with the experiments we did.

"Grip is a little bit back, but the car is still bouncing like a kangaroo. The drivers are not happy with it, and you can see that's the reason we're off."

©Mercedes

In qualifying, Russell failed to make the top-ten shootout, the Briton complaining that his car was a totally "different beast" compared to Friday despite running a similar set-up.

But Hamilton clocked in P6, and claimed that he had enjoyed his best qualifying in the last three races while admitting that no real step forward had been achieved.

• Read also: No step forward for Mercedes despite 'much better qualifying' - Hamilton

However, Wolff believes that the team is narrowing down its knowledge of the complexities impacting its car.

"[We] definitely got a better handle [on it]," he said. "Also the slump that we had today from yesterday helped.

"It's never one thing that is responsible for performance or non-performance.

"We gained good reference points from Friday, we just need to continue to understand and develop but it's clear that we have a painful trajectory to follow at the moment."

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