Lewis Hamilton says the progress Mercedes made with its car in the previous race should pay off at this weekend’s Chinese Grand Prix.
Mercedes is not introducing any significant upgrades this weekend, where teams have only a single practice session before qualifying for the sprint race. However Hamilton said they gained useful knowledge about their W15 at Suzuka two weeks ago.“Nothing’s changed with that car, so it’s going to be the same car this weekend,” he told Sky. “But we understand it a little bit more than the last weekend.
“We did make improvements and so [we’re] bringing some of those learnings into this weekend and then on top of that some new direction again. I think if we could go back, we would have done things differently, that’s the benefit of hindsight and experience.
“So we’ll try and bring that here this weekend and see if we can implement some of those changes we would have perhaps done, perhaps further in Suzuka and hopefully that can find us a bit of performance.”
Mercedes lie fourth in the constructors’ championship, only one place ahead of Aston Martin, after the first four races. But Hamilton’s team mate George Russell believes the similar characteristics of recent tracks have not flattered Mercedes.
“The last three races have all been largely very similar circuits, very high speed nature in Jeddah, in Melbourne, in Suzuka,” he explained. “We saw it was much more competitive in Bahrain, qualifying third and probably should have finished on the podium if it wasn’t for the [power unit] problem.
“So as I said in the last race, if the season started at four different circuits, we could be in a very different position now. Time will tell how we get on this weekend. We have things we need to improve and I trust the team is working their socks off to achieve that.”
Russell concurred with Hamilton’s view that “with the benefit of hindsight, we would have done things differently,” at Suzuka. “But we can only focus on the here and now and focus on the improvements. It has only been four races.”
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Ben
18th April 2024, 12:50
They’ll finish p7-10 again. I’m starting to really dislike Mercedes. I’ve never been a huge fan, but these constant “oh now we understand” comments are becoming tedious.
Every weekend we’re over promised and under delivered. It’s clear they don’t understand these regulations at all.
It’s getting to a stage where I’m starting to hope they do fall further back. Their entitled attitude shows all the time. Lazy strategy calls like they are still 2 seconds a lap faster than anyone else. Trying to make it to Q2 on harder tyres than everyone else! They seem completely clueless.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
18th April 2024, 18:03
It’s curious how they swapped: first they were under-promising when they were dominant “ferrari will be faster”, “red bull is up there” and then they were always by far the quickest, instead now they’re overpromising, like you said.
grat
18th April 2024, 19:28
Well, I’m sure you can fix it for them.
Nick T.
18th April 2024, 13:32
While it sounds like the same old same old, Mercedes’ best performances have come from figuring out how to get the best out of existing setups rather than new updates they haven’t understood fully yet. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were competitive with McLaren this weekend, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if Aston is the only top 5 they’re ahead of.
BasCB (@bascb)
18th April 2024, 14:23
Yeah, it hugely depends on whether they have really gotten a better grip on how to run the car and whether they understand it now.
Nick T.
18th April 2024, 21:34
Yup. That and temps of course. F1’s tire tempests of fate!
SteveR (@stever)
18th April 2024, 15:02
Mercedes is starting to sound like that yapping neighbors dog.
tielemst
18th April 2024, 15:16
Even a broken clock is correct twice a day (is that a saying? Not an english native), so they might get it right this time. But that’s very different from being the number 2-3 car consistently.
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
18th April 2024, 18:32
they upgraded their power unit ?
SteveR (@stever)
18th April 2024, 18:45
Power units are fixed.