2024 Mercedes-AMG | Petronas F1 Team

[Venturiation]

What happened with Hamilton in qualifying? He did a remarkable drive in the rain where driver counts and a fantastic sprint race but in Qualifying he wasnt there.

[atanatizante]

HAM said in the interview after the qualy that they changed the setup in the opposite direction to what RUS did and that was responsible for being unable to turn in the low-speed corners, particularly in turn 14 ...

Now based on what Nico Rosberg said after the sprint that both Merc and Macca drivers, PER and ALO suffered from rear tyre wear rather than left front tyre, which is strange for this circuit, suggests that they dialed in some understeer to protect the rear tyres hence they can`t rotate the car in the slow corners. Furthermore, he said this was the case also for the Ferrari drivers, who didn`t suffer too much rear tyre wear and paid the price in qualy ...

What is more worrying is that HAM was implying that presumably, these experiments will take a long time to understand the new car concept before they could both set a proper car baseline setup that works on every race (as most top teams do now) but mostly to correlate with the WT and CFD and then go for the upgrades ...

[Jdn1327]

Hero to zero with HAM. That shot of RUS, hands-on-hips speaks volumes - they better be cooking up a storm back at base with the updates.

Yeah he looks quite fed up tbh. If the car was good in race trim in would be some incentive to try do your best tomorrow. Hamilton made massive error...not an excuse but needs to be said...if merc gave them the car there would not need to he last minute heroics needed from both drivers...they're both under pressure to carry this car. I feel especially bad for Russell

[venkyhere]

HAM said in the interview after the qualy that they changed the setup in the opposite direction to what RUS did and that was responsible for being unable to turn in the low-speed corners, particularly in turn 14 ...

HAM should just record this in a tape and send it with the media assistant girl to be played at all the post-quali/post-race media pen sessions for rest of 2024 - saves him some time and effort oi actually being there and wasting his breath.

Can they please have some kind of session - any FP or quali or sprint or anything, where the car is decent in terms of laptime, AND LEAVE THE CAR ALONE AND DO NOTHING TO IT APART FROM FITTING TYRES AND FILLING FUEL ?

[El_KaPpa]

Why not change the setup and take a PU. He is starting P18. Why not start from the pitlane.

[214270]

Hero to zero with HAM. That shot of RUS, hands-on-hips speaks volumes - they better be cooking up a storm back at base with the updates.

Yeah he looks quite fed up tbh. If the car was good in race trim in would be some incentive to try do your best tomorrow. Hamilton made massive error...not an excuse but needs to be said...if merc gave them the car there would not need to he last minute heroics needed from both drivers...they're both under pressure to carry this car. I feel especially bad for Russell

Yeah, I think RUS is on course for a very long & uneventful race tomorrow - at the back of 1 long DRS train. HAM at the v least will be able to show some speed from his starting position; but the car just isnt there to make any meaningful impact forward here in China for RUS. Tough couple of days at the office.

[chrisc90]

I cant understand the changes anyhow. Without knowing the deg, which looks pretty good on F1-tempo, to the others around him. Yes there was a lot of no front end in the first few turns, but surely something like that should have been dialled out with a front wing adjustment? Lewis said "The car is massively different, We changed a lot". I really cant understand why. The car got a good result in the sprint and now they are making big radical changes. (Didnt George say the cars are pretty much the same?) The one weekend where they should have left the car alone, made a minor tweak to some wing adjustments and simply raced it, this was their weekend.
Or its just a 'cover up' like we have normally seen?

Why not change the setup and take a PU. He is starting P18. Why not start from the pitlane.

Good call, especially since he lost one due to a big failure a couple races back.

[SKYnRacing24]

It seems to me he can’t predict this car. He either leaves a couple of tenths on the table and doesn’t try to get too close to the limit or he attempts testing the limits to get the best possible time at the risk of dropping several tenths due to errors when the car does something he doesn’t expect. George is far more consistent and it’s either because he can better predict what the car is going to do, or he’s simply got faster reflexes to correct it or a combination of both. It also seems to me that the car is extremely sensitive to tyre preparation. It’s certainly not the only car on the grid with that trait. So maybe George is also better at the tyre prep than Lewis. At the end of the day maybe only Lewis and possibly the team know what his struggles are. The rest of us most certainly don’t, although it’s fair game to speculate. Whatever the reasons are, it’s clear he is struggling with the ground effect era and we don’t know if that is limited to just the Mercedes or the overall concept and how it needs to be driven. It is surprising as before 2022, he was one of the most adaptable drivers and has gone through more regulation changes than everyone except Alonso. Maybe the ground effect cars are his kryptonite but in any case, it’s up to him to figure it out and adapt.

[Jdn1327]

HAM said in the interview after the qualy that they changed the setup in the opposite direction to what RUS did and that was responsible for being unable to turn in the low-speed corners, particularly in turn 14 ...

HAM should just record this in a tape and send it with the media assistant girl to be played at all the post-quali/post-race media pen sessions for rest of 2024 - saves him some time and effort oi actually being there and wasting his breath.

Can they please have some kind of session - any FP or quali or sprint or anything, where the car is decent in terms of laptime, AND LEAVE THE CAR ALONE AND DO NOTHING TO IT APART FROM FITTING TYRES AND FILLING FUEL ?

Hamilton was out of position in the sprint, he was fortunate to get 2nd because of the train alonso had behind him. So if they did leave it alone. I think they would have finished 7th and 8th. I mean Russell will probably finish 8th tomorrow and Hamilton will struggle to make the top 10. So if they risk setup changes its because they have literally nothing to lose. I understand what you're saying. Anyway. No need to get excited for midfield race. I don't see them doing anything better than 7th unless it rains...

[Cs98]

HAM said in the interview after the qualy that they changed the setup in the opposite direction to what RUS did and that was responsible for being unable to turn in the low-speed corners, particularly in turn 14 ...

HAM should just record this in a tape and send it with the media assistant girl to be played at all the post-quali/post-race media pen sessions for rest of 2024 - saves him some time and effort oi actually being there and wasting his breath.

Can they please have some kind of session - any FP or quali or sprint or anything, where the car is decent in terms of laptime, AND LEAVE THE CAR ALONE AND DO NOTHING TO IT APART FROM FITTING TYRES AND FILLING FUEL ?

Hamilton was out of position in the sprint, he was fortunate to get 2nd because of the train alonso had behind him. So if they did leave it alone. I think they would have finished 7th and 8th. I mean Russell will probably finish 8th tomorrow and Hamilton will struggle to make the top 10. So if they risk setup changes its because they have literally nothing to lose. I understand what you're saying. Anyway. No need to get excited for midfield race. I don't see them doing anything better than 7th unless it rains...

Hamilton was faster than Alonso and Russell was faster than Piastri, so those two are beatable for Russell if he has a very good race.

[atanatizante]

I cant understand the changes anyhow. Without knowing the deg, which looks pretty good on F1-tempo, to the others around him. Yes there was a lot of no front end in the first few turns, but surely something like that should have been dialled out with a front wing adjustment? Lewis said "The car is massively different, We changed a lot". I really cant understand why. The car got a good result in the sprint and now they are making big radical changes. (Didnt George say the cars are pretty much the same?) The one weekend where they should have left the car alone, made a minor tweak to some wing adjustments and simply raced it, this was their weekend.
Or its just a 'cover up' like we have normally seen?

...

Some objective reasons why they changed the setup for qualy/main race:

1. This is a sprint weekend in which they have limited time to set up the car, ALO saying they had to "guestimate" it
2. Some opted for a setup more towards sprint due to PR reasons (Sauber/Haas) and others more for the main race Ferrari)
3. After the sprint they found unusually high rear tyre wear and bearing in mind that the car had fuel for just 1/3 of the Sunday race led them to dial more understeer/front wing to protect them. This setup made the car very hard to rotate into the slow corners, particularly for HAM in turn 14 and RUS in turns 7 and 8 ...
4. HAM after VER passed him just entered into cruising mode/managing the tyres knowing that ALO was holding the Ferraris and Maccas and there were fewer laps to the end of the sprint race.
5. We don`t know what experimental setup HAM is doing once he acknowledged now that they are in a continuous testing weekend until they figure out this car ...

In the end, I don`t think starting from the pit lane will change his chances of reaching the points tomorrow, other than it`ll be a wet race ...

[organic]

Lewis had the pace to do well in quali without the mistakes and said as much in his f1tv interview. Shame but it happens

Should focus on Russell for points and just use Hamilton's race as a testbed

[AR3-GP]

Hamilton should score points tomorrow. The gap between top 5 and the bottom 5 teams is enormous.

[Dunlay]

If required, Mercedes should completely reset Lewis' car for the race and start from pilane. Turn 1 is usually a Carbon Fiber festival. So they can avoid any mayhem and have a car exclusively setup for race. If there is a lucky SC in an ideal time, he can target Top 8.

[Hammerfist]

If required, Mercedes should completely reset Lewis' car for the race and start from pilane. Turn 1 is usually a Carbon Fiber festival. So they can avoid any mayhem and have a car exclusively setup for race. If there is a lucky SC in an ideal time, he can target Top 8.

Problem is I doubt they would know what to change. They have zero understanding of this car.