Mercedes suspects something is wrong with Bottas' car
F1 News
- GPblog.com
Mercedes have had problems getting their tyres up to temperature this weekend in Baku, just like in Monaco. Yet Lewis Hamilton will start the race from the first row of the grid. In that respect, the roles for Mercedes are reversed this time compared to the situation two weeks ago.
At that time it was Valtteri Bottas who was able to cope with the problems at Mercedes, but this time the Finn had great difficulty in setting a fast time during qualifying. Mercedes are still not sure why Hamilton was able to do that, according to the press release from engineer Andrew Shovlin.
Hamilton had better feeling with the front
"We didn't really expect to have a car on the front row going into the session but Lewis made the most of what he had and was able to put in pretty impressive laps throughout. He'd managed to get a better feel for the front end in the morning session and managed to build on that in qualifying which was encouraging."
"Valtteri has had a tough weekend from the word go. We need to pick through his car to try and understand where the issue is as he's just not got the grip that Lewis has had, regardless of where we have put the setup," said Shovlin, who still sees plenty of opportunities for both drivers during the race. The long runs on Friday looked good.