Mercedes explain why Hamilton struggled in Brazil
F1 News
While Brazil is very close to Lewis Hamilton's heart, last weekend, things did not go the seven-time world champions way. Over the Sprint and the Grand Prix, the Briton scored a single point, and went off the track on multiple occasions. Andrew Shovlin, Mercedes' trackside engineering director explained what went wrong last weekend for Hamilton, the team report.
After getting eliminated in SQ2 during and he failed to score a point on Saturday, Sunday did not go any better for Lewis Hamilton in Brazil. During the morning, the Briton was eliminated in Q1, and then finished in P10.
On the other hand, George Russell could start from the first row of the grid on Sunday, and finished in P4 after getting caught out with a red flag given he has already made a pit stop at that point. "You let the drivers deviate with the setup. They do not have to run the same, and we will let them evolve their own setup. And when one of them appears to be going well, you often take elements of that setup, or even the whole lot, and put it onto the other car," Shovlin began.
"It is fair to say Lewis was struggling predominantly with a lack of rear grip. If we look at how he had set up his car, it is not obvious where that was coming from. But in the Sprint race, as soon as you have got less grip and you are getting the snaps of oversteer on exit, you generate more temperature. That in itself will prolong the problem," the Briton said what was Hamilton's issue on the Saturday.
Why did things not improve on Sunday?
He continued: "The other factor with the weekend was the conditions were very different. Sprint Quali, Sprint race, that was in the dry, it was very hot and then the main Quali and the Grand Prix were in the wet. We did not have the session after session flow to iterate the setup and understand how to get the most out of the car. That is not the reason for the issue, but was certainly something that made it more difficult for him to get the setup that he wanted on for the race."
After a two-weekend period without a Grand Prix, Hamilton will enter his final tripleheader with the team he has won six drivers' championships, before joining Ferrari next season. Previously, Mercedes' team principal, Toto Wolff also said they would like to part ways with the Briton with a good result.
"As with any race, we spend a lot of time digging into the data, trying to understand it, and Lewis' engineering crew will be working with him on this issue, trying to make sure we get to the bottom of it before Vegas."
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