Lewis Hamilton Warned Of "Tougher" Sunday At Azerbaijan Grand Prix
Lewis Hamilton, the seven-time world champion, has been struggling to find his form this season. Despite his best efforts, Mercedes have failed to provide him with a car capable of challenging Red Bull. And despite a successful Australian campaign, the driver is once again struggling at Azerbaijan with tyre wear. Now, he's been told that today's race could be even more of a struggle.
Qualifying on Saturday saw Hamilton produce a lap capable of securing him fifth place on the grid for Sunday's Grand Prix. However, sprint qualifying garnered him a lowly P7, and the race saw him struggle with tyre wear on the hot track. Hamilton has now been warned by Mercedes' Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin that the issue could be even worse with the track expecting to hit temperatures even higher than yesterday by around 7 degrees Celcius.
"The F1 Sprint was interesting as it gives us a bit of data on tyres to carry into the race tomorrow. The medium held on pretty well, but without the Safety Car, it may have been tricky," Shovlin explained on the Mercedes website.
"George did a good job to finish fourth, while Lewis struggled a bit with the balance. He lost a place at the restart, and the rear degradation meant he didn't have the car to try and take it back. We'll look at tools to improve that for tomorrow as it's going to be even tougher with a hot track."
Strategy will be very important this Sunday, with the expected tyre lineup to be around 15 laps of medium tyres and the rest on hards, or an even shorter stint on soft tyres, followed by the rest on hards but with a focus on tyre management to allow the hards to survive. Either way, it will likely be a one-stop race, but with a chance of red and yellow flags, teams will be hoping they can profit from this.
"I like that we're trying something new with this format," said Hamilton, admitting that he likes the challenge of this weekend's format. "The extra qualifying session was fun.
"The sprint race was less exciting, but that's probably because I was struggling," he said. "It wasn't ideal losing the position to Alonso. It's never great going backwards, but that's motor racing sometimes.
"I didn't have the pace of the cars ahead of me, but I know why that is now, from having the Sprint."
Hamilton is however looking forward to making the most of what they learnt yesterday.
"It's a good indicator of what the problem is in terms of set-up, so we'll look into it and hopefully make some improvements tomorrow. It's going to be tough, but anything can happen," he said.
As the countdown to the race begins, plenty of eyes will be on Hamilton as he lines up on the third row of the grid alongside his old rival Fernando Alonso. Can he put his tyre woes behind him and get his season back on track? The answer lies somewhere in the next few hours, and we'll be watching every thrilling moment.