Mercedes Explain Reason Behind Hamilton's And Russell's Struggles In Austin

Thursday, 24 October 2024 at 22:00

Mercedes's technical director, James Allison, explained what caused George Russell's crash and Lewis Hamilotn's DNF at the 2024 United States Grand Prix weekend.

Mercedes introduced the last significant upgrade package of this season (2024) during the United States Grand Prix and hoped to challenge for the podiums again, but the results were rather strange.

From practice session number 1, Lewis Hamilton and George Russell struggled with the unpredictability of the car at certain points of the track.

Both Mercedes F1 drivers spun out at various places during the FP1 session. The seven-time World Champion then didn't make it out of Q1 in qualifying, and the 26-year-old lost the rear of his car in Q3 and crashed.

While the Grand Prix race went much better for Russell, who started from the pit lane and finished sixth, it was a nightmare for Lewis Hamilton, who lost his rear in turn number 19 on lap 2 and got stuck in the gravel, which meant he was out of the race.

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Toto Wolff defended his 39-year-old star driver, saying it was 100% the fault of the car and not his. But what exactly happened? James Allison explained in the Mercedes's debrief video after the weekend:

"We had a bumpy weekend, and we had our new clothes on the car, our so-called update 19 that we were quite excited about and still are quite excited about."

"But we also had a whole heap of things that are not normal. Lewis spun in Free Practice. We had George nearly lose the back end of the car as well. George crashed in qualifying. Lewis spun off in the race."

Looking at how the Mercedes drivers struggled, the first conclusion might be that the new upgrade didn't quite work. However, Allison suggests that's most likely not the case.

"All the things we measured suggested that the upgrade package was behaving as we would expect. The downforce was there."

"We did not see prior to the spins anything breaking down on the flow structures under the car. There is every reason to think the updates were good and we will enjoy that for the remainder of the year."

"The spikiness that we saw that pitched us into the barriers on an unusual number of occasions was because we had the car too low, too stiff, and had the handling degrade unacceptably as a result."

Ultimately, Mercedes's technical director said his team will continue with the same upgrade in upcoming races, including this week's Mexico City Grand Prix, as he believes the same issues that we've seen in Austin won't reoccur.

"We will find out in the coming races because we will persist with the upgrade package, and if it persists in winding up in the gravel, then we will put two and two together. But my guess is it will not."