Lewis Hamilton has raised a fresh injury concern caused by porpoising on top of the back pain he suffered at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
He was clearly in a lot of discomfort as he clambered out of his Mercedes at the end of the Baku race, before claiming the pain was "100 times worse" than it had looked. The Briton also later showed off his gruelling recovery regime to get himself as fit as possible for this weekend's race in Montreal.
While back problems are more than enough to be worried about, it is not the only potential negative side-effect on Hamilton's mind. As well as spine damage, there is also growing concern over micro-concussions being caused by the relentless bouncing.
" In terms of micro-concussions, I have definitely been having a lot more headaches in the past couple of months," Hamilton told reporters. " But I have not seen a specialist about it so I have not taken it too seriously, I have just taken painkillers. So hopefully I don't have any concussions."
Many drivers who have called for the FIA to do something in the interest of driver safety got their wish on Thursday, when they announced a technical directive and pledged to "reduce or eradicate" porpoising. But Max Verstappen was left unimpressed as he feels teams should raise their ride height and sacrifice performance if needed to protect their race rs.
But according to Hamilton no such quick fix exists, as he claims his Mercedes is not able to go any higher. "So in the last race and previous races we have raised the car and we still have bouncing," he explained at the pre-practice press conference in Montreal on Friday.
"Porpoising is more about the flow structure underneath the car so we have run the car high all season and it was not until Barcelona that we started to be able to get the car a little bit lower.
"We had no bouncing for the first time in Barcelona except for in the high-speed corners and then it appeared again in Monaco and in Baku so we had to raise the car again.
"So even when we raised the car, this thing still bounces and we can't go any higher actually, we are limited by the rear suspension now. So we do lose performance naturally when you do go higher but this porpoising is actually caused by the disrupted flow beneath the car."
