Spanish GP: Mercedes F1 team introduced major upgrades in Monaco last week as opposed to it earlier scheduled venue of Emilia Romagna. Though not an ideal track to bring in upgrades, the Brackley team decided to go bold and do it anyways. It paid off well for the team as they ended up finishing P4 and P5 with Lewis Hamilton leading George Russell. The season so far has been a sub-par one for the Mercedes.
Though they have made significant strides if compared to last season, there is still a long way to go to. Mercedes has been the most dominant team in last decade. However, for the past two years there has been an entirely different scenario. Last season, the team brought in an entirely new design, especially the sidepod concept. Finally after their digressing from original plan, they brought in new and wider sidepods in the W-14.
This is supposed to be a huge overhaul in the material aspects of the W-14 machinery. Silver Arrows debuted a new floor, front suspension and sidepods in Monaco. Now, they made further addition of a new diffuser at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya which worked for Hamilton in Spanish GP.
Lewis Hamilton was not optimistic before main race
Lewis Hamilton had opened up about the struggles with this upgraded package after a below par practice sessions. Although, Hamilton managed a podium in Spanish GP, he was earlier not very optimistic after the practice sessions.
“[The car feels] OK, we’re fighting as hard as we can. I would say it was a difficult day one. Just getting on top of the tyres and the degradation, and the car feels like the car. It’s so different from last week of course, we’re just focusing…I think the long run pace didn’t look terrible and we’ve just got to work on trying to figure out how we can extract more on a single lap,” said the Briton
“From the pace that I had today it’s a struggle for me currently to get into the top 10 (in qualifying). Hopefully we’ll do some changes overnight,” he added.
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