© Steve Etherington for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd.
Mercedes’ Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin says damage done to Lewis Hamilton’s car at the Dutch Grand Prix “would have been costing in balance and a little bit of downforce”.
On lap 1 of the Dutch Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton and Carlos Sainz made contact. Although it was not noticeable immediately, Mercedes later discovered Lewis’ car sustained damage.
“You will have heard him come on the radio and say that he had made contact and asked us to check the car,” said Mercedes’ Andrew Shovlin in the team’s race debrief.
“What we can do then is we can look at the tyre pressures, we can see that the tyre is holding air in it so we know that we haven’t got a puncture and the other thing is we are looking at all the aero sensors on the car trying to establish if there is damage.
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“Now, the damage wasn’t very significant in terms of performance, but we did have damage to the front wing endplate which would have been costing in balance and a little bit of downforce on the car.
“The other thing is we had a cut in the tyre that we didn’t know about until we got the tyre back at the end of that stint.
“Now, luckily that didn’t cause a puncture, but it would have been very close to causing a serious problem bringing Lewis in on lap one,” the Briton concluded.
