Lewis Hamilton says that he is suffering from back pain in Azerbaijan due to the bouncing his car is doing at high speed around the Baku City Circuit.
Mercedes has suffered from severe porpoising throughout much of the 2022 campaign, and has been unable to compete at the front of the field with a car that is off the pace of Ferrari and Red Bull.
The Woking-based team appeared to have a sizeable decrease in the porpoising effect in Barcelona after introducing upgrades, however the bumpy nature of the Baku circuit has led to more bouncing this weekend.
In 2022, teams are running their cars lower to the ground than previous years in order to extract as much downforce as possible amid the introduction of new regulations.
But Mercedes’ car has continued to oscillate, causing Hamilton to suffer from notable back pain in Baku.
“Honestly, yesterday [during practice] we had so much bottoming I could not finish my long runs because my back was in a real mess,” Hamilton said.
“So thank god for Angela [Cullen], who gave me physio and acupuncture and I was still in quite a bit of pain this morning.
“Now we don’t have it as bad at the end of the straight but it is the corners where you are trying to keep it out of the wall but I am hoping on heavy fuel it will be better.
“But we are very slow on the straight and I am sure part of that is the bottoming, which slows you down, so we have a lot to do.”
Hamilton ended Saturday’s qualifying session in seventh place, while team-mate George Russell was two places ahead in fifth.
However, Hamilton says that the qualifying outing was focused on avoiding the barriers, as he struggled with visibility due to the bouncing.
“The visibility has been the same for us all year,” he said. “It is definitely tough. For me it was about keeping the thing out of the wall on the fast, high speed kerbs.
“Nothing we seem to do, like we have changed so many things but we just can’t see to… it is crazy because in Barcelona we didn’t have any and then everywhere else we’ve had it.
“It is a phenomenon we just cannot get our heads around. It is a safety thing for sure.
“Today it was bottoming around corners where you are doing 180mph and having big, big bottoming and there is not much you can do to stop it.
“We can’t have this for four years of this car, so I think they do need to work on it.”
Nothing to the pain of suffering his tedious interviews during the coverage. Eased only by the blessed relief of seeing him hop back onto his silly little toy and scoot off down the paddock, with his puella scampering along behind him.