Mercedes CEO reveals ‘serious’ Lewis Hamilton problems

Mercedes has identified Saturday’s qualifying sessions as a key area where George Russell has consistently outperformed Lewis Hamilton this season, with a remarkable 10-2 margin. Mercedes technical director Andrew Shovlin insisted that the current Ground Effect-era car does not suit the seven-time world champion’s driving style.

Hamilton was renowned for his pole position finishes before the current regulations era, ahead of 2022. He took an impressive 104 pole positions in his 344 career Grand Prix, only one of which came in a ground-effect car.

On the other hand, Russell has proven himself a formidable contender, securing top-three positions in four of the 12 Grand Prix weekends. Shovlin suggested there are reasons why Hamilton is outqualified by Russell on most race weekends, telling the media:

“Lewis made no secret of the fact that Saturday was his tough day.

“He’s struggled with this whole generation of cars, which don’t really suit his style. He’s worked on how he drives.

“But we’ve done a huge amount of work to make the car faster – it just wasn’t fast enough – but also with a handling balance that allows the drivers to really attack the lap on Saturday. So we’ve made progress.

“Recently George outqualified Lewis by quite a margin in qualifying, so it’s great for the team to have Lewis back and he’ll keep pushing. We’ll keep working on that and I’m sure we’ll hopefully see more pole positions for Lewis.”

Hamilton has a tendency to push the car to its limits, which often results in oversteer. As a result, the team sets up the car for him to suit his style of ‘attacking’ a corner. Shovlin added:

“It’s more the way he wants to attack a corner.

“When you do that, the car oversteers. You start to build up the tyre temperature. So most of our work was to give him a car that you can drive very aggressively, get the lap time out of it without pulling away and surprising him along the way.”