George Russell says Mercedes is taking inspiration from its "glory years" for the design of its 2024 F1 car as it works tirelessly to reestablish itself at the head of the field.
After exerting its dominance over the sport from 2014 to 2021, Mercedes lost its way last year in the wake of Formula 1's technical regulations overhaul.
Undermined by chronic porpoising issues and by its unpredictable behaviour, the Brackley squad's first-generation ground-effects car only won one race, with Russell delivering the single victory in Brazil at the end of the season.
This year's W14 and its successive updates instilled improved consistency, while bouncing was also significantly mitigated. But despite the progress Mercedes remained, like its rivals, well adrift from Red Bull's commanding RB19.
And at last weekend's Belgian Grand Prix, where Lewis Hamilton and Russell finished respectively 4th and 6th, porpoising reared its ugly head once again, which has led Russell to believe that Mercedes has perhaps been following the wrong path in terms of its set-up direction.
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"I think this weekend has validated that probably the direction we've taken with the set-up in recent races hasn't been the right one," said the Briton.
"We suffered with a huge amount of bouncing today. A number of teams did, maybe not as severe as we did, still obviously a bit of a shame to see that as a sport at the pinnacle the majority of teams are still struggling with bouncing.
"I hope something can be solved in that regard in the future."
Russell thinks the issue can be immediately addressed with set-up changes and hopefully completely ironed out on next year's design.
"Yeah, definitely can be tweaked. I think we're working really hard on the characteristics for next year," he added.
"We're looking a lot at how the previous generations of cars were for Mercedes during the glory years, and using that as a bit of inspiration, as clearly that was one of the best cars in history.
"So that's given us some pointers on where we need to try and aim for."
©Mercedes
Ahead of F1's three-week summer break, Russell cast a look back at the first half of his season.
"A season of two halves," he said. "So, I'd say the first six races were really strong. The last six races not so much. A few ideas why that is, quite a lot of missed opportunities this season for various reasons.
"Some from mistakes of my own, some like the failure in Australia cost me a lot of points. But nevertheless, if you're not fighting for the P1 in the drivers’ championship, you just want to maximise the constructors’, and so far we're kind of doing that.
"I'm sure we're going to be strong in the second half of the season. And we've got some little things come in after the break.
"But I'm confident we can sort of secure the second best team [position], and try and close that gap further."
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