2022 has proven to be extremely difficult for eight-time defending Constructors’ Champions Mercedes. It continued today as they qualified P5 and P7 for tomorrow’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

Russell and Hamilton were almost 1.4 and 1.6s off the pole time of Charles Leclerc as porpoising has reared its ugly head for the Brackley-based team once again.

Speaking to MotorLAT and other media outlets after qualifying, Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff confirmed that Hamilton was running experimental parts – and a different car to his teammate – as they desperately try to solve their issues.

"Lewis has been trying some quite experimental parts of the car and there was a different floor solution on his car that didn't work.

"The car was porpoising more and bottoming out to a degree that it became dangerous and [he] couldn't extract the performance.

"So yes, it was a different spec."

For the third race in a row, Russell has outqualified Hamilton. He now leads 5-3 in the head-to-head battle, too.

The younger Brit is also 34 points ahead of the seven-time World Champion ahead of tomorrow’s race.

Despite Russell’s fantastic start to life at Mercedes, Wolff believes a general pattern hasn’t formed yet, because Hamilton’s been trying experiments on his car that haven’t worked.

"It is too early, in a way try, to identify a pattern because I am very close to it and I see that one session one is faster and the next, the other is faster," explained Wolff.

"And because the car is on a knife-edge, if you put a foot wrong in terms of experiments on the car which need to be done in order for us to learn how to perform, where to put the car, there are two-three tenths immediately between them.

"Yeah, the last three races, these experiments have gone wrong with Lewis and not with George."