Hamilton Believes He Might Have Identified Issue Behind Poor Qualifying Performance
F1Wednesday, 03 July 2024 at 22:00
Speaking to the media following the 11th round of the season at Red Bull Ring, Lewis Hamilton suggested that he cracked the problem with qualifying struggles.
The qualifying head-to-head score between Lewis Hamilton and his teammate George Russell was 2-9 after the 2024 Austrian Grand Prix.
Although the average delta between the two drivers is one of the smallest on the grid, the 26-year-old just managed to outperform his more experienced teammate by tiny margins consistently in the first couple of races.
The seven-time World Champion complained about somehow losing two-tenths in his pace between the final practice and qualifying every single time.
What quite often happened was that Hamilton looked very strong in the practice sessions, but his pace vanished once everyone moved on to qualifying.
This led to speculations that the German team might be sabotaging their own driver in some sort of revenge because he will be leaving at the end of the 2024 season either way.
It is important to note that these speculations have been dismissed by both Mercedes drivers and their team principal, Toto Wolff. But then, what could be Hamilton's problem? Speaking to the media after the 11th round of the 2024 season, the 39-year-old suggested he might have solved it.
"A huge amount of analysis, requesting a lot of information from the team, on how we can improve where we are lacking. It is simply with tires, and so just continuing to improve on our processes from session to session."
"Typically, once we get to qualifying, things do change a little bit. The car is obviously lighter, you are in the DRS a lot more. Time will tell. But I think we cracked something. Now to try and build on it."
In the last two Grand Prix race weekends, Hamilton first out-qualified Russell by 0,002 seconds (in Spain) and then got out-qualified by 0,063 seconds (in Austria). Can he start turning around the losing head-to-head battle with his teammate at his home Grand Prix in Great Britain?
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