Mercedes believes Lewis Hamilton has benefited more than teammate George Russell from the improvements made to the W15.
The German manufacturer has had a difficult start to the 2024 season, with its car proving inconsistent and having a narrow performance window.
However, once the team managed to unlock at least some of the W15’s potential, the car advanced towards the front of the grid, and has now won three of the last four races.
This step forward also coincided with Hamilton’s ability to make better use of the car, after having struggled against Russell in the early stages of the season.
Mercedes technical director Andrew Shovlin believes Hamilton’s performance has improved precisely because he initially struggled with the characteristics of the W15.
“I think Lewis maybe found the car more difficult to handle at the beginning,” Shovlin explained.
“One of the areas where we’ve improved with the car is being able to come into FP1 with a set-up that’s a good base to start building performance off of, and then fine-tune it. That helps him massively over the course of the weekend.”
“At the beginning of the year, we were making relatively small changes and suddenly the balance of the car would let us down and we would really struggle.”
“And, yes, it’s probably fair to say that in the early races Lewis had more difficulty with the set-up than George.”
Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes-AMG, with Andrew Shovlin, Technical Director Mercedes-AMG
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images
Mercedes and Hamilton are aware that the current generation of cars and downforce tyres are not ideal for the driving style of the seven-time world champion, who cannot exploit his braking potential to its full potential.
However, as Mercedes has made the W15 faster, Shovlin says both drivers now demand similar things from the car itself.
“There’s a certain riding style that suits these tyres,” he said. “Typically the two riders are never that far apart on the set-up.”
“So once the car is in a good window of use, the same approach works quite well for both drivers. And between sessions, the two drivers study what the other is doing to try to find advantages.”
“The two of them have worked together over the course of the year. At the beginning, neither of them wanted to end up where we were, and they were able to help each other by trying different experiments with the set-up and the driving style. In general, you progress as a team, and that’s how a two-driver team works.”
Shovlin admitted that the first races were a particular challenge for everyone, because the team felt very close to the leaders, but was unable to finish in the desired positions.
“It was quite frustrating at the beginning of the year because we were finishing fifth, sixth, seventh, and often we would find that with another tenth of performance we would have been three places higher on the grid,” he added. “So we have made some progress.”
“That’s why we can get on the podium now. But regardless of whether the car is fast or not, or whether it’s slow, the drivers are always there to help us understand what the next step is, where it’s best to spend our development resources and try to transform them into performance.”
“That hasn’t changed. It’s just that with a faster car it’s all a lot more fun.”
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