Although Mercedes acknowledges responsibility for that one, Lewis Hamilton’s mistake that ended his Q1 elimination in China when Q3 was “easily” on was cited by Mercedes technical director James Allison.
Hamilton got the Chinese Grand Prix racing weekend off to a great start by taking advantage of the wet conditions to secure P2 on the Sprint grid. He would go on to lead the opening part of the race before finishing P2 behind the highly skilled Max Verstappen.
Mercedes is to fault for Lewis Hamilton’s crucial mistake.
Hamilton, a record six-time victor at the Shanghai International Circuit, had a lot of momentum going into the Grand Prix qualifying, but that all vanished after a shocking Q1 departure.
Allison blamed Mercedes for two things, while pointing out that Hamilton had a wide moment at the hairpin that lost him seven tenths of a second. The first is that Hamilton was not forced to follow a run plan similar to that of teammate George Russell, and the second is that the W15 car was designed to be “too tricky” and to cause such “very uncharacteristic errors.”
“I was talking earlier on about this change to the rules, the two parc fermé rule which allows us another stab at setting up the car between the Sprint part of the weekend and the proper part of the weekend,” Allison remarked during Mercedes’ debriefing following the Chinese Grand Prix.
“I stated that although this is a very welcome regulation adjustment, it has two drawbacks. Although you have the chance to change the car, your first taste of the modifications you’ve made will be in qualifying, in Q1. If you make the incorrect decisions between the Sprint portion of the weekend and the main event, you risk making the car slower and suffering accordingly.
Therefore, if you make a poor decision, you will suffer, and that’s when it truly matters—that’s when you’ll realize you’re suffering.
“Well, I don’t have to speculate because Lewis was very clear about it when he spoke about it later. He expressed how much he wished he had followed George’s strategy, which involved fueling for two timed laps during his first run in Q1 so that he could get a feel for the car during the first flying lap, do a cool-down lap, and then take another stab at the cherry to gain even more feel for the vehicle.
Lewis, on the other hand, completed one timed lap later in the session and made it quite evident that he wanted another one.
He discovered that his modifications had increased the car’s understeery and made it simpler for it to lock up when braking, and that he was just applying pressure to the front brakes in an awkward manner.
“I believe that everyone witnessed what transpired during his second run, which was merely his second timed lap; consequently, as he was racing down the main straight into the bottom hairpin, he simply lost form slightly when braking and went deep, which is only 0.7 of a second.” Without that significant void, he may have easily progressed to Q3 and beyond.
Thus, he would raise his hand and utter the words “my mistake, my error.” We should, in my opinion, be a little more realistic and admit that we made a mistake by not encouraging him more strongly to pursue a program similar to George’s. As a result, we should be developing a car that is not as complicated as the one we currently have, which is leading to drivers making extremely unusual mistakes.
“We have two of the world’s best drivers, and the car is too tricky, so locking up at the end of a straight into a hairpin is not in Lewis’s recipe book.”
On Grand Prix Sunday, Hamilton would bounce back to finish in P9, his third such placing in five races this season.
