Listen to this article Mercedes has struggled with severe porpoising on its 2022 W13 car, which limits how low the team can run it and prevents Russell and Hamilton from extracting the most performance out of their package. The eight-time world champion squad was way off the pace of the leading Ferrari and Red Bull cars in the first three rounds of 2022, but both Russell and Hamilton still managed to secure an unlikely podium. In the Bahrain season opener, Hamilton benefited from a dramatic double Red Bull DNF to finish third, a result matched by Russell in Australia thanks to an off for Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz Jr and another retirement for Red Bull’s world champion Max Verstappen. Red Bull’s reliability woes allowed Mercedes to hold second in the constructors’ championship, with Russell also splitting Charles Leclerc and Sainz in second place in the drivers’ standings as Hamilton follows further down in fifth. While Russell acknowledged it was “pretty crazy” for him to be second behind runaway leader Leclerc, he said he wasn’t too interes …