10/08/2024
NEWS STORY
Mercedes trackside engineering director, Andrew Shovlin shed light on the turnaround that has seen Lewis Hamilton claim victory in two of the last three races.
It was only a month ago that Shovlin admitted that the seven-time world champion's driving style simply didn't suit the current ground effect cars, however dogged persistence and the willingness to experiment, by both the driver and his team, has seen Hamilton's fortunes undergo a dramatic turnaround.
"I think early on perhaps Lewis was finding the car more difficult to deal with," admits Shovlin. "One of the areas that we've improved with the car is being able to land the set-up in FP1. That's a good foundation to start building on performance and fine-tuning it helps your weekend enormously.
"In the early part of the year, we were making relatively small changes," he continues, "and suddenly the whole car balance left us and we were really struggling.
"So that certainly helped and it's probably fair to say that in the earlier races Lewis was finding it more difficult to set up than George."
In an effort to get to the root of the problem, both drivers ran experimental set-ups, as the German team sought to reveal the car's true potential.
"I think there's a certain driving style that suits these tyres," he admits. "You tend to find that the two drivers are never that far apart on set-up now, so once the car's in a good window the same thing's working pretty well for both of them. Between sessions they're studying what the other one's doing to try and find where the gains are.
"Through the year the two of them have been working together early on," he adds. "Neither of them wanted to be finishing where we were and they were able to help each other through trying different experiments with set-up and driving style.
"Overall you progress as a team and that's how a team with two drivers works."