© LAT Images for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd
At the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix Lewis Hamilton amazingly managed to keep pace with Max Verstappen despite sustaining front wing damage.
Hamilton started the race from pole, but Max Verstappen was able to overtake him in the first corner. However in the process of doing so, the two cars slightly touched, while Hamilton’s car was also forced over the kerbs and sustained front wing damage.
At first it appeared the damage did not slow Hamilton down, as he was able to keep pace with Max Verstappen, but after the race Mercedes Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin confirmed the damage was indeed slowing him down.
“The initial damage looked really bad, of the order of half a second or so,” Shovlin said after the race.
“It was being made worse by the fact the footplate was flopping around, it was held on by some pressure tappings. And that was causing a lot of very inconsistent flow further down the car.
“When we actually jettisoned that, and happily, we got rid of it without it puncturing the tyre, the damage was about half of that amount.
“So, two or three tenths or something. But the problem is, we’re so close to where Max is on pace, it’s the difference between being able to keep up and, and drifting back a bit. So yeah, it was quite a compromise.”
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Shovlin also said Red Bull seemed to make a better getaway at the start of the race, which could be due to better tyre warmup.
“I think they did here. But I don’t know that that would have necessarily been the case off the line. I think you saw that in the first couple of laps.
“That’s not to say their car is better than ours in that regard, because these are things that you can configure and it’s always a bit of a compromise between the warm up and then the longer run.
“Whether we got that compromise right, we need to go off and have a look at it. But I think that the glimpses we saw on the intermediate, yes, it looked like they did although obviously Lewis did sustain that damage and he’s trying to figure out what the car is doing.
“You know, where it’s strong and where it’s weak. If I look on the medium tyre, it’s not so clear.
“I thought we were actually pretty good on the warm up compared to them,” concluded Shovlin.
