Lewis Hamilton compared this year’s Mercedes F1 car, the W13, with the 2009 McLaren MP4-24, which he considers to be the worst car he has ever experienced.
McLaren got off to a disastrous start in the 2009 season when Brawn GP took the initiative with a double diffuser and Red Bull regularly won.
In the first half of the season, Lewis Hamilton regularly finished points out of range. Even if he won the prize, he was far from the battle for victory with 4th, 6th and 7th place.
However, McLaren worked hard to develop a nasty car, and Lewis Hamilton eventually bounced back to win Hungary and Singapore, winning four pole positions.
Lewis Hamilton cited the McLaren MP4-24 as an example of how the F1 team can turn around poorly performing cars during the season.
“Some people think I’ve never had a bad car,” said Lewis Hamilton, who finished 14th in Imola’s sprint race.
“I can assure you that I’ve had a bad car too. The car in 2009 was so far away that it was the worst car I had.”
“Currently, this car (W13) isn’t too far from that experience, but I think it has a lot of potential.”
“In that car, we finally fixed it, fought, or returned to the game, and I’m sure my team can do it here as well.”
Lewis Hamilton expanded what went wrong in 2009 and said McLaren underestimated how much downforce had to be regained after the winter rule changes.
“The 2009 scenario was that I was in my third year in the sport. It was an era of a whole new car,” recalls Lewis Hamilton.
“And I remember coming back to the team in February or January. The top aero dynamists and the guys on the team were like,’Kiwatoku r has already achieved his goal.’ Remember “
“The new rules said that in 2009 we would have 50% less downforce, so they designed the car to have 50% less downforce! So in February we said,’We’ve already achieved our goal. I remember thinking, “It doesn’t sound right …” in a situation like “I did.”
“But I had no experience at the time, and I reached the first test and realized that others had about the same downforce as the previous year.”
“They were like,’We have to work hard to regain downforce,’ and the ultimate unlock was a double diffuser, and we got there.”
But Lewis Hamilton emphasized that Mercedes wasn’t making the same mistake in W13, and that the porpoising phenomenon is making the team difficult.
“This time the team wasn’t like’we’ve already achieved our goals’ and the situation is different. No one knew where they were. They were very innovative in terms of design. And there was a really good downforce in the wind tunnel. “
“Unfortunately, when I went out on the course, I didn’t see it. For example, there was no bouncing in the wind tunnel, and we encountered this phenomenon.”
“This experience is much harder to fix than we imagined, but as I said, it doesn’t kill us, it just makes us stronger, and we have some way of solving it. Will find “
Category: Category: F1 / Lewis Hamilton / Mercedes