True Effect Of Collision That Supposedly Slowed Hamilton Down Revealed By Mercedes Engineer
F1
The trackside engineering director at Mercedes, Andrew Shovlin, commented on the real extent of damage to Lewis Hamilton's car caused by a minor collision with Charles Leclerc in Japan.
The 2024 Japanese Grand Prix was another tough race for Lewis Hamilton fans to watch. On the one hand, the seven-time world champion outqualified his teammate George Russell and started two places higher up the grid.
On the other hand, he seemed to have no pace from the start of the race and was caught by the 25-year-old within 11 laps. The 39-year-old apparently felt that he had no pace, so he even offered to let his teammate pass him.
After the race, Hamilton told the media he made that call because he felt like he suffered damage from a minor collision with Charles Leclerc at the start of the race, which resulted in significant understeer for him. Shovlin said:
"It did lose a bit [of performance]. More than the absolute amount of downforce you lost, it just made the car a bit more understeery on a stint where we were probably already a little bit on the understeery side."
"The track was hot so on the grid we took a little bit of wing out for that. But that additional loss then caused him problems and he was actually quite front limited throughout that first stint."
The team was then able to adjust Hamilton's front wing, which helped him, and he recovered some time on his teammate before the end of the race but couldn't catch him. Shovlin added:
"At the pit stop we didn't change the wing but we can put some flap angle back in it. You can put a bit more load on and that actually put the car in a much better place."
"So, as I said in terms of headline numbers, not a lot of lap time when you can balance it out but certainly adding to the problems that we had during stint one."
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