Andrew Shovlin commends Lewis Hamilton’s unwavering talent, emphasizing his enduring race pace and adaptability in challenging 2024 conditions.
Andrew Shovlin does not believe Lewis Hamilton has lost the level he once had. The Mercedes F1 chief track engineer highlights that the seven-time world champion’s race pace has consistently been strong in 2024, even if he struggled to manage the flaws of the W15 over a single lap.
“The car hasn’t been fast enough, and that’s what we’ve been trying to fix,” Shovlin stated. “The car hasn’t been easy to place in a balanced window, and once you find it, maintaining it has been a challenge.”
“Beyond all that, Lewis struggled on the quick laps. His race pace was there throughout the weekend. But with a tight grid, you often start a few places behind your teammate, and then you’re held up and can’t show what you’re capable of.”
“But Lewis’s race pace has been excellent. In Las Vegas, he showed that if he has a car that works the way he wants, he can fight to return to the front. And we saw the old Lewis.”
Shovlin detailed the issues faced by his now-former driver: “The problem for him is trying to extract the last tenth or two. It’s been tough trying to avoid brake locking and losing control on exits.”
“It’s just those kinds of issues. But the team believes we needed to give Lewis a car closer to what we had in Vegas, where it suited his style and allowed him to perform at his best.”
Shovlin does not believe Hamilton has struggled with the ground-effect cars as other drivers, like Kevin Magnussen or especially Daniel Ricciardo, have.
“Nowadays, I think it’s largely about avoiding overheating the rear tires. If you approach a corner in a way that gets them hot or need to rotate the car on the throttle, you’ll face difficulties.”
“The braking style might be a factor among others, but I don’t know enough about Magnussen and Ricciardo to say if that was their issue. However, it’s clear that keeping heat out of the rear tires on a single lap is the most important thing on half or two-thirds of the circuits.”
Shovlin also explains why solutions that worked for George Russell weren’t suitable for his teammate: “I mean, 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 observe where, ultimately, when they really start pushing, that’s when you begin to see signs of oversteer on exits. And that’s an area where Lewis sometimes suffers more than George.”
“But, as I said, the goal of our year has been to find a way to adapt the car to Lewis’s needs so he can drive it to the limit without suffering from these issues.”
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Shovlin Highlights Hamilton’s Consistent Brilliance in 2024 Shovlin Highlights Hamilton’s Consistent Brilliance in 2024
