In a few days, Lewis Hamilton will officially become a Ferrari driver, leaving Mercedes after 12 years. However, his final season with the team saw him struggle particularly in qualifying, a challenge that George Russell experienced far less.
At the end of the season, Mercedes—through Andrew Shovlin—tried to shed light on what held Lewis back for much of the 24-race 2024 Formula 1 calendar.
“The car wasn’t fast enough, and that was the main issue we tried to address,” said Andrew Shovlin, reflecting on Lewis Hamilton’s challenges. The car was difficult to bring into a balanced window, and even when we got it there, keeping it there was a challenge. Beyond all this, I think Lewis struggled on the single lap. His race pace was there throughout the weekend. But with a tightly packed grid, you often start a few places behind your teammate, get stuck, and can’t show what you’re capable of. But Lewis’s race pace was very strong. In Las Vegas, he demonstrated that when he has a car set up the way he wants, he can fight his way back to the front. We saw the old Lewis again.”
Andrew Shovlin pointed out specific aspects of qualifying that Lewis Hamilton found particularly challenging.
“The issue for him was finding that last tenth or two. It was tough to avoid brake lock-ups or sudden snaps on exit. These were the main problems.”
“But from the team’s perspective, we needed to give Lewis a car more like the one we had in Las Vegas—something that suited his style and allowed him to perform at his best.”
While there appears to be a trend of skilled braking drivers like Hamilton, Daniel Ricciardo, and Kevin Magnussen struggling with this generation of ground-effect cars, Shovlin isn’t convinced this was the primary factor. He suggests the biggest challenge might have been getting the cars to rotate under throttle without overheating the rear tires.
“I think keeping heat out of the rear tires is key nowadays,” he said. “If you take a corner in a way that overheats them, or if you need to rotate the car with the throttle, you struggle. Braking style might play a part, but I don’t know enough about Kevin Magnussen and Daniel Ricciardo to say if that was their issue. But certainly, maintaining rear tire heat on a single lap is crucial on about half to two-thirds of the circuits.”
The fact that George Russell consistently extracted more from the W15 suggests there might be differences in driving styles between him and Lewis Hamilton.
However, Andrew Shovlin doesn’t believe there’s a clear explanation for why Russell managed qualifying issues better.
When asked if there was a data-based explanation, Andrew Shovlin replied: “Not really in terms of style or approach, because Lewis is wise enough to know that if something works for George, he can adapt his driving to go in that direction.”
“There are things you can see when they start pushing hard—like the snaps of oversteer on exit—that Lewis might suffer from more than George at times. But, as I said, our goal for the year was to give Lewis a car that he could drive on the limit without these problems.”
Leave a Reply