‘It’s promising to see’ – George Russell encouraged by new FIA porpoising update ahead of Canadian Grand Prix

George Russell has supported the new announcement made by the FIA yesterday regarding the issues teams are having with porpoising.

In Baku last week at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, Mercedes were especially concerned with the physical challenges that the bouncing of the car was causing their drivers.

This has now led to the FIA this week revealing a new set of measures and regulations that all the teams must adhere to in order to combat the porposing issues.

George Russell was optimistic when speaking to Sky Sports this week on how the FIA have shown a "front-foot" approach to tackling the problems.

He said: “I think it’s something that we as drivers have spoken about globally, that we want change moving forward because what we went through last weekend just wasn’t sustainable.

“It doesn’t matter what boat you’re in, you’re either porpoising and you’re hitting the ground, or you have no porpoising so you’re running the car really close to the ground and you’re bottoming, so either way you look at it, it’s not great.

“I think it’s promising to see that they’ve taken action on this straight away and it’s not taken them weeks and months and political decisions to change something like this.

“When it comes to safety, things need to be resolved as soon as possible, so I’m not surprised to see it come in so quickly, but I think it’s good for everyone.”

However, there remains concern that the new measures that will be introduced could have a detrimental effect on the performance of Lewis Hamilton and Russell.

Russell explained: “I think this is something that everybody thinks Mercedes is sort of pushing for, but from a pure performance side of things… we don’t really want change because if there’s change, you never know if it’s going in your favour or against you.”

It is believed that the FIA will hold a meeting at the Canadian Grand Prix this weekend in Montreal, to discuss how to implement the new measures.

The FIA stated that they want to introduce these measures in order to aid the “immediate physical impact on the health of the drivers, a number of whom have reported back pain following recent events.”

The FIA also added in a statement: “Following the eighth round of this year's FIA Formula One World Championship, during which the phenomenon of aerodynamic oscillations ("porpoising") of the new generation of Formula 1 cars, and the effect of this during and after the race on the physical condition of the drivers was once again visible, the FIA, as the governing body of the sport, has decided that, in the interests of the safety, it is necessary to intervene to require that the teams make the necessary adjustments to reduce or to eliminate this phenomenon.”

Despite the obvious technical issues at Mercedes and the physical battle facing the drivers, Russell has quietly had a very good start to life at Mercedes.

He has outperformed Hamilton in the majority of the races this season and is fourth on 99 points in the drivers' standings, above Carlos Sainz of Ferrari and only 17 points behind championship competitor Charles Leclerc, with Sergio Perez (129) and Max Verstappen (150) occupying the top two spots.