“Lewis’ Q1 elimination is also our fault” – Mercedes

Lewis Hamilton went through heaven and hell in just a few hours last weekend in Shanghai. He even led for a few laps in the sprint race of the Formula 1 Chinese Grand Prix, then finished second behind Max Verstappen, but then just a few hours later he was eliminated in qualifying in Q1, from which he could only advance to ninth place on Sunday.

The seven-time world champion did not hide that they went astray with the settings between the sprint and qualifying, which was made possible by this year’s new parc fermé rules, and even Toto Wolff, the Mercedes team leader, admitted that Hamilton’s experiments backfired. However, according to James Allison, the team’s F1 technical director, Mercedes also contributed to the problem by choosing the wrong tactics for Q1:

“I said earlier that this is a welcome rule change, but it’s also a double-edged sword. If you make the wrong decision between the sprint section and the main events, the car may be slower and you will suffer accordingly, and although you have the option to adjust the car, you can try the changes first in qualifying, Q1. So if you make the wrong choice, you can suffer and you’ll find out when it really counts,” Allison explained in Mercedes’ usual post-Grand Prix evaluation video.

“There’s no need to speculate on that because Lewis was quite open about it afterwards that he wanted him to take the same approach in the first run of Q1 as George. We fueled George’s car for two timed laps so he could get a feel for the car on his first fast lap, then go for a fill lap and then have another shot. Whereas Lewis went out later in practice and did a measured lap, and after that Lewis clearly knew he needed another lap.”

“He noticed that the changes he made made the car more understeer, it made it easier to brake the car, and the front brakes were causing him difficulties. I think we all saw what happened on the second run, which was only the second timed lap: at the end of the back straight, at the hairpin, the car wobbled, slid deep and stayed there for seven tenths of a second. That’s quite a big difference, without which he would have easily passed.”

“Then he held up his hand and said, ‘my fault, my mistake.’ I think the story would have been more rounded on our part, and we should have said that we should have pushed a little harder for him to complete a program more similar to George’s,” Allison pointed out.

“So it’s our fault and frankly we should build a car that’s not as tricky as the one we have now, which makes the drivers make uncharacteristic mistakes. We have two of the best drivers in the world and blocking at the end of the back straight is not in Lewis’s recipe book and it is a result of our car being too tricky.”