Mercedes vow to “iron out” bouncing woes with “similar” Australia warning

Mercedes F1 engineer Andrew Shovlin says the team is concerned by how much time they were losing in the high-speed corners in Saudi Arabia - conceding it could be a problem in Australia as well.

The Brackley-based outfit endured a frustrating race at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit as they finished sixth with George Russell and ninth with Lewis Hamilton.

Mercedes were considerably weak in the first sector which consists of high-speed, sweeping corners.

This was most notable when Hamilton was following Lando Norris in the latter part of Saturday's race.

The seven-time world champion would be within 0.5s going into the first corner, then Norris would break the one-second DRS gap.

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has already said that their current car has a “fundamental” issue which they don’t yet understand.

Speaking after the race, Shovlin, who is their trackside engineering director, gave his  view on the situation for Mercedes.

"We've not performed well this weekend,” he said. “Our high-speed performance has been weak, and the car is bouncing in those corners.

“That contributed to our poor qualifying but also meant we couldn't challenge Aston Martin and the McLarens in the race.

“We were losing so much time in sector one that we spent the rest of the lap clawing it back.”

The next two races in Australia and Japan are high-speed circuits, meaning Mercedes could be set for another couple of difficult weekends if they can’t fix their weaknesses.

"Overall, it has been a very frustrating weekend but ultimately one of our own making,” he added. “We've seen glimpses of strong performance, but it's not been easy to land the set-up in the right place and we've clearly got some weaknesses that still need ironing out.

“We are going to have to work hard between now and Melbourne to improve. The tracks are similar and we don’t want another weekend like this one.”