F1
Sunday, July 21, 2024, 10:35 a.m
Author: Tamás Balogh; Photo: Attila Szabó
After the chief engineer of Mercedes, the seven-time F1 world champion himself explained why the current generation of racing machines do not suit his style.
Since the arrival of ground-effect cars in Formula 1 in 2022, Lewis Hamilton has had a negative record in most of the qualifying sessions once morest his team-mate George Russell.
Andrew Shovlin, the chief engineer of Mercedes, recently spoke regarding the fact that the current generation of F1 racing cars simply do not fit Hamilton’s style. After the time trial of the Hungarian Grand Prix, the 39-year-old driver himself explained the situation:
“It’s only with these tires. For some reason they don’t like the way I drive on a single lap. I’ve been smoking in time trials for quite some time and I’m still working on it to try and improve. It will come together at some point, I just have to keep working on it,” Hamilton is quoted as saying by the magazine Crash.net.
“I would say that during my career I never had any serious problems adapting to the tires. But I’m not sure that it’s necessarily related to the tires, I think it’s more to do with the type of car.”
“The car is very… It dances on a knife edge a lot more than before and doesn’t like it when you brake late and deep and do a V-turn. You have to brake and roll into gear early, and I hate that. It’s just not me, that’s not how I drive the car, and I find it extremely frustrating.”
After Saturday’s qualifying, Hamilton also spoke regarding how the heatwave in Mogyoród is making things difficult for the W15 this weekend, while the two main teams seem to be going on rails at the Hungaroring:
“I suffered this weekend with the car, especially in the heat it’s very, very difficult to find balance when the car doesn’t really bite. If you look at Red Bull and McLaren, they don’t have any oversteer at all, like they’re running on rails. For us, however, the heat makes the situation worse.”
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