Lewis Hamilton is hopeful Mercedes can be stronger this weekend in Mexico round a observe that’s much less bumpy than the Circuit of the Americas.
The seven-times world champion endured a depressing weekend on the Circuit of the Americas final week as he did not convert promising tempo on Friday into factors on Sunday.
Hamilton was knocked out of grand prix qualifying in Q1 down in sixteenth place, earlier than spinning out of the grand prix itself on the second lap. The group later pointed to a recorded gust of wind exceeding 40kph as having contributed to his early retirement.
Mercedes introduced new upgrades to their W15 final weekend in Austin. Hamilton hopes his efficiency in Mexico can be stronger than it was final week.
“It actually relies upon if I expertise the identical issues that I did within the final race with the upgrades,” he mentioned.
“The automotive was unstable final weekend, however it was a really bumpy observe. This isn’t a bumpy observe, so hopefully on a smoother circuit, possibly we gained’t have the identical issues.
“If we don’t have the issues we had final week then possibly we could be a little bit nearer to the entrance. It’s all an enormous ‘if’ and I’m simply hoping for the optimistic.”
Mercedes’ technical director James Allison believes the group suffered over the bumps in Austin as a result of they ran their automotive too low to the bottom. He identified the automotive carried out nicely on Friday.
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“Not solely did George [Russell] practically safe the pole in that [sprint race qualifying] session, Lewis practically smashed it completely out of the park,” he mentioned in a video launched by the group. “He was method forward of any of the instances till he received a bit snarled with Colapinto.
“Why did that then not materialise in the remainder of the weekend? That’s the key query for us. My guess is that we had been flirting a bit too carefully with the bottom.
“These vehicles like operating low and also you typically choose up lap time as you’ll be able to get the automotive nearer to the bottom. However push it too far and the automotive begins behaving in a reasonably disagreeable vogue. When you simply hit a bump mistaken, it’ll unseat the automotive, make the rear finish come out on you and simply ship a degree of efficiency that when it’s good, it’s nice, however for those who simply hit a bump on the mistaken second, a crosswind on the mistaken time, you then get punished for it.
“My guess is that we had been simply pushing our luck just a little bit an excessive amount of when it comes to how close to to the bottom we received, how stiff we ran it.”
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