F1 News: Mercedes Director Reveals Lewis Hamilton's 'Tough' Struggles

Saajan Jogia | Jul 20, 2024

2024 Bahrain Test, Day 3 - Lewis Hamilton / Jiri Krenek / Mercedes

Mercedes has identified Saturday qualifying sessions as a crucial area where George Russell has consistently outperformed Lewis Hamilton this season, boasting a remarkable 10-2 ratio. Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin emphasized that the current ground effect era car does not align with the seven-time world champion's driving style.

Hamilton was known for his pole position finishes before the current era of regulations, preceding 2022. He bagged an impressive 104 pole positions in his 344 Grand Prix career, with only one being secured in a ground effect car.

On the other hand, Russell has proven himself as a formidable contender, securing top-three positions in four of the twelve Grand Prix weekends. Suggesting that there are reasons for Hamilton being out-qualified by Russell on most race weekends, Shovlin told the media:

"Lewis hasn't disguised the fact that Saturdays were his tough day.

"He's struggled with this whole generation of car, really, not suiting his style. He's been working on how he drives.

"But we have had a huge amount of work trying to get the car to be quicker - it just hasn't been quick enough - but also with a handling balance that the drivers can actually attack the lap on Saturday. So we've made progress.

"Recently, George has out-qualified Lewis by some fairly fine margins. So it's great for the team that Lewis is back up there and he'll be pushing on. We'll keep working on that, and I'm sure that we'll hopefully see some more Lewis pole positions as well."

Hamilton tends to take the car to the limit, causing it to oversteer many times. As a result, the team sets up the car for him in a way that suits his style of 'attacking' a corner. Shovlin added:

"It's more the way he wants to attack a corner.

"When you do that, then the car would snap to oversteer. You start to build tire temperature. So most of our work has been trying to give him a car that you can drive the very attacking style, extract the lap time out of it without it breaking away on the way in and catching him by surprise."