© Stephen Reuss for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix ltd.
Mercedes’ Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin says Lewis Hamilton has “struggled with this whole generation of car”, because they are “not suiting his style”.
Ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix, Mercedes’ Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin has discussed the issues Lewis Hamilton has been having with the current generation of Formula 1 cars.
“Lewis hasn’t disguised the fact that Saturdays were his tough day,” the Briton said.
“He’s struggled with this whole generation of car, really, not suiting his style. He’s been working on how he drives.
“But we had a huge amount of work trying to get the car to: a) be quicker – it just hasn’t been quick enough – but also with a handling balance that the drivers can actually attack the lap on Saturday. So we’ve made progress.
“Recently, George [Russell] has outqualified Lewis by some fairly fine margins. So it’s great for the team that Lewis is back up there and he’ll be pushing on.
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“But yeah, we’ll keep working on that. And I’m sure that we’ll see hopefully some more Lewis pole positions as well.”
Asked to what he means by Lewis’ driving style not suiting this generation of cars, Shovlin explained:
“I mean, it’s particularly he struggled on the single lap. So his long run pace is always there. And that’s been really useful.
“It’s more just the way that he wants to attack a corner. When you do that, then the car would snap to oversteer. You start to build tyre temperature.
“So most of our work has been trying to give him a car that you can drive the very attacking style, extract the lap time out of it without it just sort of breaking away on the way in and catching him by surprise,” the Briton concluded.
