Mercedes apologise to Lewis Hamilton after forcing disastrous ‘very uncharacteristic error’Jamie Woodhouse

Lewis Hamilton in the Mercedes W15.

Mercedes technical director James Allison pointed to a Lewis Hamilton error which sealed his Q1 elimination in China when Q3 was “easily” on, though Mercedes accept responsibility for that one.

The Chinese Grand Prix race weekend began in fine fashion for Hamilton, who took advantage of the damp conditions to secure P2 on the Sprint grid, while he would go on to lead the first-half of that event before crossing the line P2 behind the dominant Max Verstappen.

Hamilton took a great deal of momentum therefore into qualifying for the Grand Prix, though that all went out the window after a shock Q1 exit for Hamilton, a record six-time winner at the Shanghai International Circuit.

Allison pointed to a wide moment for Hamilton in the hairpin that cost him seven-tenths of a second, but said it is Mercedes to blame on two counts. Firstly, for not pushing Hamilton down a run plan comparable to team-mate George Russell’s and secondly, for creating a W15 car which is “too tricky” and triggers such “very uncharacteristic errors”.

Speaking as part of Mercedes’ Chinese Grand Prix debrief, Allison said: “I was talking earlier on about this change to the rules, the two parc fermé rule which allows us another stab at setting up the car between the Sprint part of the weekend and the proper part of the weekend.

“I said this is a very welcome rule change but also a double-edged sword. If you make the wrong choices between the Sprint part of the weekend and the main event, you can end up making the car slower and suffer accordingly and although you get this opportunity to adjust the car, your first taste of the adjustments you’ve made are in qualifying, in Q1.

“So if you’ve chosen poorly then you will suffer and the first time you’ll know you’re suffering is when it really counts.

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“I would say, well I don’t need to guess about this because Lewis was absolutely explicit about it afterwards, he said he really wished he had taken the same approach that George had taken which was in his first run in Q1, George fuelled to do two timed laps so that he could have a feel of the car in the first flying lap, do a cool down lap and then have another bite at the cherry which would just give him more of a feel for the car.

“Whereas Lewis went later in the session, one timed lap, one timed lap and Lewis was very clear afterwards that he needed another lap.

“He’d found that the changes he’d made had made the car more understeery, they’d made it easier for the car to lock up under the braking and he was just pinching those front brakes in a way that was causing him difficulties.

“I think we all saw what happened on his second run, which was only his second timed lap therefore, running down the main straight into that bottom hairpin, he just got a little bit out of shape on the braking, went deep and that’s 0.7 of a second just there. That’s quite a big gap without which he would have easily got through to Q3 and whatever.

“So he would hold his hand up and say “my mistake, my error”. I think we would be a little more rounded and say we should have actually encouraged more strongly that he was pursuing a programme a bit more like George’s, so that’s our mistake and we should frankly be making a car that is just not so tricky as the one we’ve got at the moment which is causing the drivers to make very uncharacteristic errors.

“We have two of the best drivers in the world and locking up at the end of a straight into a hairpin is not in Lewis’s recipe book and it’s a consequence of the car being too tricky.”

Hamilton would recover to a P9 finish on Grand Prix Sunday, his third such result out of five races so far this season.