© Steve Etherington for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd.
Mercedes’ Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin says Lewis Hamilton could have fought with Lando Norris and George Russell at the Monaco Grand Prix, had he not been stuck in traffic.
Lewis Hamilton spent most of the Monaco Grand Prix stuck behind the Alpines of, first Esteban Ocon, and then Fernando Alonso.
Unfortunately, the characteristics of the narrow Monaco track prevented the Briton from passing either driver, even though he was much faster than them.
In Mercedes’ race debrief, Andrew Shovlin said this fact was a source of frustration for the team.
“The frustration with Lewis’s Monaco race was that he spent almost all of it in traffic,” the Briton said.
“He didn’t get many laps to show what he could actually do but the car was working reasonably well.
“We haven’t got the pace there to compete with the Ferrari and the Red Bull but certainly he would have been in amongst that battle with George and with Lando.”
One of Lewis’ attempts to pass Ocon even led to the Frenchman crashing into him, a move for which he would later receive a five-second penalty.
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The collision also damaged Lewis’ front wing, which he managed to change during the second red flag period of the race.
Shovlin says the damage didn’t slow him down considerably.
“It wasn’t too big a number. Looking at the data we get off the car, it was around one to two tenths of a second.
“So not large and conveniently the red flag allows us to repair any accident damage, so we could swap that front wing without actually having any time penalty for doing the work during a pit stop.
“More pleasing was that that was the only damage that we had over the course of the Monaco weekend.
“So, really good job by both drivers to bring the cars home more or less intact,” Shovlin concluded.
