Lewis Hamilton revealed after Sunday’s Belgian Grand Prix that his car had started bouncing again, something he admitted was a “concern”.
The seven-time World Champion endured a fairly boring race, with him having slipped from third to fourth in the opening stages at the legendary Spa-Francorchamps.
Hamilton was demoted to fourth after being overtaken by race winner Max Verstappen, who started the race in sixth following a five-place grid penalty.
The 38-year-old went on to finish the race in fourth, after not quite having good enough pace to catch Charles Leclerc in third.
Want to work in Formula 1? Browse the latest F1 job vacancies
After admitting defeat in the hunt for a podium, Hamilton chose to pit ahead of the penultimate lap to receive a set of new Medium tyres.
He ended up stealing the fastest lap from Verstappen on the final lap, something he admitted was “decent”.
Despite this, Hamilton explained that he’d suffered from “big bouncing” all weekend, similar to what the Silver Arrows experienced last season with porpoising.
To make matters worse, Hamilton revealed that Mercedes “don’t know” why the W14 had suddenly started bouncing, with it now being part of the team’s investigations.
“It was kind of a non-eventful race,” Hamilton said.
READ: Max Verstappen breaks silence on clashing with his race engineer
“There wasn’t much going on and I wasn’t able to keep up with the cars ahead of me. Struggled at the beginning, rear end is our biggest issue and we had big bouncing this weekend so we were back to the bouncing like we had last year.
“At the end I was keeping the Ferrari within a few seconds but I couldn’t get any closer to battle and to get the fastest lap at the end, it was nice to have the gap to the car behind. The last lap was decent. It was gusty today, it was difficult out there to keep it on track.
Hamilton continued: “(The team) don’t know (what’s caused the bouncing). To me it is a concern but we’ll work through the data this week and try and figure out what we do for the next race.
“I know what I want, I’m praying for it and I’m just waiting for the day we get it.”