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Mercedes is to review and learn from the latest incident which led to Lewis Hamilton and George Russell “tripping over each other” during the Belgian Grand Prix weekend.
Hamilton and Russell were both unhappy following the sprint shootout at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit, with the seven-time F1 champion, in particular, bemoaning the “poor communication” from the team.
The 38-year-old was on provisional pole after the first run in the final session of sprint qualifying, and certainly felt confident enough that he would have at least secured a front-row grid start.
But the last laps of both drivers were heavily compromised, with Russell, notably, getting in Hamilton’s way as they powered out of La Source, and then through Eau Rouge and Raidillon.
The upshot resulted in the duo failing to set a competitive time on the second run and starting seventh and 10th respectively before going on to finish seventh and eighth at the end of the rain-affected shortened race.
Team principal Toto Wolff later stated Mercedes needed to “raise its game”, especially as this was the second incident between the duo this season following their collision at the Spanish Grand Prix.
Reflecting on what unfolded, chief technical officer Mike Elliott said: “In order to explain it, I think I first need to explain how difficult it is to get right in the first place.
“When you have a track that is drying it is nearly always the case the quickest lap is going to be the very last lap of the run and so your first laps are about getting a banker lap in, and then as you get to the end of the session you want to be at the right place so you are just about crossing the line at the end of the session with your tyres in the right window.
“So, we are pretty much heading towards that but what we could see was in the last corners, 18 and 19, where you get to open the lap there was a lot of queuing, a lot of cars there, and so we were worried about getting over the line before the session ended, and we were asking our drivers to speed up.
“They thought they had less time available than they really did and as a result of that, we ended up with our two cars too close together.
“As it happened, I think a number of cars were disadvantaged, were far too close together, so we weren’t the only ones that were struggling.
“Unfortunately for us, our two drivers tripping over each other pretty much meant that we didn’t get the laps that we wanted and therefore didn’t get the sprint qualifying result we really hoped for.
“As always we’ll review the footage, review the radio communications and we will see what learnings we can extract, work out how we can improve for the future.
“I am definitely sure there are some learnings we can extract from the weekend.”
Another area under review will be the difference in set-up between the two drivers, with Russell, in particular, opting for a bigger rear wing compared to the one on Hamilton’s W14.
Russell went on to endure a difficult weekend, one he said he was glad to see the back of ahead of a much-needed summer break.
Elliott, however, claims the wing on Russell’s car was the one he chose in preparation for the event, albeit with those preparations then compromised by what proved to be a predominantly wet weekend that ultimately undermined set-up work.
“Like every race weekend, we go in by doing an amount of work in the simulator, an amount of work to try and get the general balance requirements of the car right, work out what downforce level we want to run, work out where we are going to place our mechanical balance, our aero balance, just to get ourselves roughly in the right window,” remarked Elliott.
“So the two drivers did that programme before the Spa race weekend, and in George’s case, he felt that the bigger rear-wing gave him some options.
“He preferred the balance of the car driving with that, so he elected to start the race weekend with that, and normally what happens is the two drivers come together over the race weekend but obviously the weekend was pretty wet, there was no dry running and both of them quite liked the car they got so elected to stay where they were.”
