Lewis Hamilton and George Russell stated small modifications to the configuration of their Mercedes have made a serious distinction to a automotive which was solely the fifth-quickest in the beginning of the yr.
Russell beat Hamilton to pole place for the British Grand Prix at the moment. It’s the first time Mercedes have locked out the entrance row of the grid primarily based on qualifying occasions because the technical laws modified in 2022.
After two seasons pursuing an analogous automotive design philosophy, Mercedes modified their strategy for this yr. Since then they’ve regularly improved their automotive’s efficiency.
Russell took pole place for the Canadian Grand Prix, albeit after setting an similar lap time to Max Verstappen, and received the Austrian Grand Prix after the Pink Bull driver collided with Lando Norris.
After main the workforce to their first one-two in a traditional qualifying session because the 2021 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, Russell stated minor tweaks have made a major distinction to the W15’s efficiency.
“We’ve made some small modifications which have had a big effect,” he stated. “We knew from the beginning of this yr [that] the baseline of this automotive is considerably higher than what we’ve had in earlier years.
“However we went from having an ‘oversteer automotive’ final yr, then to an ‘understeer automotive’ this yr. And now we’ve simply dialled it again and located the pleased medium.
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“While you’ve bought the steadiness in a great place, the tyre temperatures are in the fitting window, and the lap time simply actually snowballs positively. It hasn’t been a considerable change, but it surely’s made an enormous distinction to the lap time.”
Hamilton agreed the workforce has made a “large distinction” to its automotive’s efficiency in current races.
“It’s simply higher in every single place,” he stated. “[In] Bahrain, for instance, the automotive felt horrible, and… we made [progress] by way of dialling and fine-tuning the automotive to optimise the aero bundle.”
He believes the workforce has lastly been capable of channel its growth potential in a helpful route with a floor effect-era automotive.
“This workforce has by no means struggled so as to add efficiency, however the place notably they put that efficiency has at all times been, with this technology of automotive, has been a giant query and the place we’re getting the downforce from. However now they’ve executed a tremendous job, the engineers again on the manufacturing facility.”
Nonetheless Hamilton sounded a notice of warning that Mercedes haven’t but proved as aggressive as Pink Bull and McLaren in race trim.
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“We’ll positively take it at the moment, however Pink Bull, notably Max, and the McLarens are very, very, very quick. And in some methods, you noticed within the final race, they have been fairly a bit forward of us.
“So I’m hoping that tomorrow, with the circumstances, we will maintain our personal.”
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