Lewis Hamilton has faced ongoing struggles with the porpoising issue in his Mercedes during the 2024 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix weekend, consistently trailing his teammate George Russell in all sessions, including qualifying.
This problem, which first emerged in the 2022 season, involves the violent bouncing of the car due to the downforce generated by severed airflow underneath the car.
Despite efforts by most teams to solve this issue, Mercedes continues to grapple with it, much to Hamilton’s frustration. He expressed disappointment after qualifying, stating that the bouncing made it difficult to push through certain sections of the track, particularly in the first sector, leading to slower lap times.
“Unfortunately, the bouncing is still there,” Hamilton said to the media after qualifying. “It’s very, very, very difficult to push through that first section. That’s why we like so slow in that first sector.”
When asked if he felt frustrated, he was conservative in his response and said, “It’s three years in a row [now].”
Hamilton had hoped for improvement after a more positive third practice session, where he ran a larger rear-wing setup. However, the benefits of this setup seemed to diminish during qualifying, leaving him back where he started.
Nevertheless, Hamilton remains optimistic about the car’s potential overall, acknowledging improvements over previous models but highlighting the persistent issue with porpoising.
“I think if we took that [porpoising] away the cars really so much better than last year,” Hamilton continued. “In every in every area. It’s just that’s really causing us some real big trouble.
“In second and third sector we’re a lot closer and we’re able to be closer through some of it and all the rest of the corners, but just that first section, it’s same as last year.”
In terms of performance, Hamilton’s qualifying results in Saudi Arabia have varied over the years, with a shock Q1 elimination in 2022 and a half-second gap to Russell in 2023.
In 2024, he managed to narrow the gap to Russell to just 0.150 seconds but still found himself almost a second behind the pole-sitter Max Verstappen. This suggests both progress and setbacks for Mercedes at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit.
