Another challenging weekend for Mercedes, and particularly for Lewis Hamilton, was the Japanese Grand Prix. But the team has identified a race-related issue that hampered his pace.
Lewis Hamilton finished in a lackluster ninth position in Japan, but Mercedes has subsequently revealed that he was addressing a problem with his front wing that was exacerbating the understeer of his vehicle.
The 39-year-old will never forget the journey to Suzuka. After qualifying in seventh place, ahead of George Russell and Charles Leclerc, Hamilton struggled to the finish line, giving up track position to his teammate in the middle of the race and failing to deliver on an aggressive tyre strategy.
Nevertheless, team trackside engineer director Andrew Shovlin has now verified that damage to one of Hamilton’s front wing end plates was a key cause in his poor performance throughout the race.
According to Shovlin, “it did lose a bit [of performance].”
“It just made the car a bit more understeery on a stint where we were probably already a little bit on the understeery side, more so than the total amount of downforce you lost.”
“Not many laps completed.”
Teams had to adjust to the unexpectedly warm weather on Sunday before the race began. “We took a little bit of wing out on the grid because it was hot, but that additional loss then caused him problems and he was actually quite front limited throughout that first stint,” Shovlin said. A strategy reset had been made possible by the first lap red flag caused by the race-ending incident involving Daniel Ricciardo and Alex Albon. Shovlin’s comments suggested that the team’s decision during the race stoppage was more crucial to Hamilton’s early pace than his front wing issue.
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For both Hamilton and Russell, Mercedes chose to use a one-stop strategy with two sets of Hard tires. Nevertheless, in the last moments of the race, both drivers were pitted again for Medium tyres as this offset plan failed.
We didn’t alter the wing during the pit stop, but we can restore some flap angle. You can actually put the car in a lot better position by adding a little more load,” he continued.
“So, as I mentioned in the headline numbers, not a lot of lap time when you can balance it out, but definitely contributing to the issues we encountered in the first stint.”
