Overplaying them? Absolutely not.
But letting the drivers suffer when the solution to porpoising is common knowledge just to not lose any more performance? Yes.
Maybe even applying some media pressure to get the FIA to have a minimal ride height to gain net performance? Perhaps.
But suggesting they’re overplaying serious pain is disgusting. As disgusting as Merc letting their drivers go through it when the solution is at hand. This is far beyond what a competition and having a performance advantage should look like, this is messing with peoples health. If McLaren or Red Bull were the ones letting their drivers drive like that, the community would be up in arms. Again, I love Merc, but I don't know why we're letting it fly that this team is risking serious injuries on two young men only to gain a competitive advantage, refusing to raise the ride height, and then complaining to the governing body of the sport to get a rule change that would benefit them and no one else. And Horner can kindly shut his mouth after asking the same governing body to raise the minimum weight of the cars only because they were massively overweight with their own car.
I agree. What made me a little angry yesterday was that Toto said they have reserve driver if Lewis could not race due to his back pain or something along this lines. Even if that was said in informational context, to assure that both cars will be racing and to underline the seriousness of bouncing, it surprised me and not in a good way. If your 7xWC driver (or any driver, really) could not race because of what your car does to him, it certainly means that you need to do something to your car no matter its performance. Besides, what makes anyone think that a reserve driver (with all due respect) could control the same car better than Lewis and not feel it in their backs.
I just get the feeling that apart from experimental parts of Lewis' car that we hear about constantly, drivers are part of experiment too, let's just see how much they can handle.
Fortunately Lewis posted today that he feels better and he will be racing, but still back pain is no fun especially when it affects the nerves as well
(I rolled out of bed today, because I slept in weird position and really felt my back and I certainly wasn't bouncing driving 300 km/h LOL)