Lewis Hamilton ‘conclusion’ reached as Mercedes diagnose W15 Qatar problems
Mercedes believe Lewis Hamilton’s limited setup changes to the W15 car after the Qatar Grand Prix sprint race likely contributed to his poor performance over the rest of the weekend.
Despite returning to winning ways at Silverstone and Spa, Hamilton has endured one of the most challenging years of his career in F1 2024 having been dominated in qualifying by Mercedes team-mate
Lewis Hamilton Qatar problems explained as Mercedes reach ‘conclusion’
Additional reporting by Thomas Maher
Hamilton’s season slumped to a new low in Qatar, where he started sixth – half a second adrift of Russell, who started from pole position for the second race in succession after a penalty for Max Verstappen – and finished a distant 12th.
The seven-time World Champion incurred separate penalties for a false start and speeding in the pit lane during a torrid race, with Hamilton asking over team radio at one stage if his car was broken.
In the latter stages, Hamilton was heard pleading with the team to retire the car with his request denied by the pit wall.
Hamilton, who announced earlier this year that he is to join Ferrari on a multi-year contract from F1 2025, will make his final appearance for Mercedes at this weekend’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, having claimed six of his joint-record titles with the Brackley-based team.
Hamilton has frequently claimed to have experimented with car setups throughout F1’s ground effect era since 2022 in an attempt to help the team find a technical breakthrough with their underperforming machinery.
Appearing on Mercedes’ post-race Debrief show, however, trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin claimed that Hamilton’s lack of changes after the mini race is likely to have cost him in Qatar as the track evolved.
A tweak to the sprint race rules for F1 2024 sees parc ferme regulations relaxed in the hours between the sprint and qualifying for the main race, allowing teams to adjust to the improving track conditions and identify a more ideal car setup.
Asked why Hamilton’s car was “underbalanced” in Qatar, and whether team or driver led the setup direction, Shovlin said: “Underbalance means too much understeer. When they say overbalance, that means they have got too much oversteer.
“Now, why was that the case?
“The balance that we had in the Sprint race on Saturday was good and if you took George’s car, he didn’t make a lot of changes between the end of the Sprint race and qualifying, because you come out of parc fermé, you go back into it for qualifying, you have this opportunity to work on the setup.
“The track was getting grippier and grippier, and that normally means you get more understeer in the car. That is what you would generally get.
“The engineers and the drivers are looking at the different runs they have done over the weekend.
“They are tracking how much aero balance we are carrying, what mechanical balance we have got, and they will compensate for that increased grip normally by putting a bit more front wing in, for instance.
“Both did that, but we do need to understand why we still ended up with too much understeer.
“And then during the race, we were adding more and more front wing and it was proving quite hard to dial that out.
“Maybe the conclusion will be that we should have shifted the setup more, but it is quite difficult to predict exactly where the grip is going to land.
“Going back to the original question, whose decision is it? The engineers, the drivers, they all work closely together to arrive at that.
That is just the nature of their relationship.”
Speaking to media including PlanetF1.com after the race in Qatar, Toto Wolff, the Mercedes team boss, raised the possibility that Hamilton’s preferred driving style is fundamentally unsuited to the ground-effect cars in place over the last three seasons.
He said: “I think one of his strengths is always how he’s able to brake late and attack the corner – and that car can’t take it.
“And then, when there’s like today where the grip comes in, that phenomenon is even more articulated and makes it even worse for him.
“And makes it worse for George also. And then if the car slides more and lacks grip, it comes alive.
“That’s a pattern feature of this car, so that contributes to him probably suffering more than George.
“You can see that with this generations of car, no team has really found – apart from Red Bull, maybe the last two years, but particularly this year – the solution, that they have stable performance over most of the tracks through all of the ambient conditions.
“There are these massive oscillations that you can see. How can it be that a Red Bull is nowhere on one day and then on the next day just very dominant?
“It’s the same for us: we were two seconds quicker in Las Vegas at some time in the race, George cruised in the front and everybody else fell back.
“And then here you see the opposite. I think it’s just that it’s so sensitive to operate in that window that when you when you try to force it, it becomes even more unstable as a platform.
“I don’t think it’s only Lewis’s problem. We can see that in other cars with other drivers as well that have oscillating performances.
Does [Hamilton’s driving style] add [to his woes]? Maybe.
“But this is so subtle, also driving styles, but it’s clearly when you’re very strong on the brake you need a car that’s strong on turning in and you just hit the throttle and you need lots of traction.
“When the car is not giving you any of that, it’s very difficult to drive around.”
Lewis Hamilton ‘conclusion’ reached as Mercedes diagnose W15 Qatar problems
Mercedes believe Lewis Hamilton’s limited setup changes to the W15 car after the Qatar Grand Prix sprint race likely contributed to his poor performance over the rest of the weekend.
Despite returning to winning ways at Silverstone and Spa, Hamilton has endured one of the most challenging years of his career in F1 2024 having been dominated in qualifying by Mercedes team-mate
Lewis Hamilton Qatar problems explained as Mercedes reach ‘conclusion’
Additional reporting by Thomas Maher
Hamilton’s season slumped to a new low in Qatar, where he started sixth – half a second adrift of Russell, who started from pole position for the second race in succession after a penalty for Max Verstappen – and finished a distant 12th.
The seven-time World Champion incurred separate penalties for a false start and speeding in the pit lane during a torrid race, with Hamilton asking over team radio at one stage if his car was broken.
In the latter stages, Hamilton was heard pleading with the team to retire the car with his request denied by the pit wall.
Hamilton, who announced earlier this year that he is to join Ferrari on a multi-year contract from F1 2025, will make his final appearance for Mercedes at this weekend’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, having claimed six of his joint-record titles with the Brackley-based team.
Hamilton has frequently claimed to have experimented with car setups throughout F1’s ground effect era since 2022 in an attempt to help the team find a technical breakthrough with their underperforming machinery.
Appearing on Mercedes’ post-race Debrief show, however, trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin claimed that Hamilton’s lack of changes after the mini race is likely to have cost him in Qatar as the track evolved.
A tweak to the sprint race rules for F1 2024 sees parc ferme regulations relaxed in the hours between the sprint and qualifying for the main race, allowing teams to adjust to the improving track conditions and identify a more ideal car setup.
Asked why Hamilton’s car was “underbalanced” in Qatar, and whether team or driver led the setup direction, Shovlin said: “Underbalance means too much understeer. When they say overbalance, that means they have got too much oversteer.
“Now, why was that the case?
“The balance that we had in the Sprint race on Saturday was good and if you took George’s car, he didn’t make a lot of changes between the end of the Sprint race and qualifying, because you come out of parc fermé, you go back into it for qualifying, you have this opportunity to work on the setup.
“The track was getting grippier and grippier, and that normally means you get more understeer in the car. That is what you would generally get.
“The engineers and the drivers are looking at the different runs they have done over the weekend.
“They are tracking how much aero balance we are carrying, what mechanical balance we have got, and they will compensate for that increased grip normally by putting a bit more front wing in, for instance.
“Both did that, but we do need to understand why we still ended up with too much understeer.
“And then during the race, we were adding more and more front wing and it was proving quite hard to dial that out.
“Maybe the conclusion will be that we should have shifted the setup more, but it is quite difficult to predict exactly where the grip is going to land.
“Going back to the original question, whose decision is it? The engineers, the drivers, they all work closely together to arrive at that.
That is just the nature of their relationship.”
Speaking to media including PlanetF1.com after the race in Qatar, Toto Wolff, the Mercedes team boss, raised the possibility that Hamilton’s preferred driving style is fundamentally unsuited to the ground-effect cars in place over the last three seasons.
He said: “I think one of his strengths is always how he’s able to brake late and attack the corner – and that car can’t take it.
“And then, when there’s like today where the grip comes in, that phenomenon is even more articulated and makes it even worse for him.
“And makes it worse for George also. And then if the car slides more and lacks grip, it comes alive.
“That’s a pattern feature of this car, so that contributes to him probably suffering more than George.
“You can see that with this generations of car, no team has really found – apart from Red Bull, maybe the last two years, but particularly this year – the solution, that they have stable performance over most of the tracks through all of the ambient conditions.
“There are these massive oscillations that you can see. How can it be that a Red Bull is nowhere on one day and then on the next day just very dominant?
“It’s the same for us: we were two seconds quicker in Las Vegas at some time in the race, George cruised in the front and everybody else fell back.
“And then here you see the opposite. I think it’s just that it’s so sensitive to operate in that window that when you when you try to force it, it becomes even more unstable as a platform.
“I don’t think it’s only Lewis’s problem. We can see that in other cars with other drivers as well that have oscillating performances.
Does [Hamilton’s driving style] add [to his woes]? Maybe.
“But this is so subtle, also driving styles, but it’s clearly when you’re very strong on the brake you need a car that’s strong on turning in and you just hit the throttle and you need lots of traction.
“When the car is not giving you any of that, it’s very difficult to drive around.”
