How Monaco F1 qualifying exposed a Mercedes weakness that could resurface

The W12 struggles to generate tyre temperature as quickly as the Ferrari and Red Bull cars, a characteristic that has benefits at circuits such as Barcelona, where a combination of track layout and abrasive tarmac makes it something of a tyre killer. 

But due to the Monaco GP being held on public roads, the nature of the tarmac is less harsh on tyres. That, along with a lack of high-speed corners, means tyre warm-up can prove problematic. 

That was exactly the case on Saturday in Monte Carlo as most of the teams struggled in temperatures that were around 18 degrees cooler than Thursday, leading drivers to complete multiple timed-laps in a bid to get their tyres into the optimum operating window to maximise performance. 

So while Lewis Hamilton benefitted from being able to look after his tyres better than Max Verstappen in the Spanish Grand Prix - a factor that was key to his eventual victory - it ultimately hampered Mercedes in Monaco. 

Hamilton slumped to his worst qualifying result since Germany 2018 with a lap only good enough for seventh, marking the first time that the seven-time world champion has qualified outside the top two this year. 

“[It was] magnified here with it being a low energy circuit and with no high-speed corners,” Hamilton said of his tyre warm-up struggles in qualifying. “Also, today was much, much cooler.”

Issues relating to tyre warm-up on the Mercedes first emerged at Imola when Valtteri Bottas could only qualify eighth in cool conditions before things got worse in a rain-affected race. In Monaco, however, Bottas fared better, managing third on the grid following some late tweaks to his car ahead of qualifying. 

Mercedes used its innovative dual-axis steering device - better known as DAS - through 2020 to allow its drivers to adjust the toe angle of the front tyres by moving the steering wheel back and forth along the straights, something which assisted with tyre warm-up. 

The device was banned for 2021 but Bottas said he was unsure if DAS would have solved his tyre woes at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.

Hamilton was able to cope with better with tyre warm-up than Bottas in Imola, but the fortunes were dramatically reversed in Monaco qualifying.

The Briton put this down to Mercedes taking the wrong set-up direction after Thursday practice, saying his team “completely missed the ball” by making changes that ultimately exacerbated his struggles to get his tyres in the right temperature window.  

“Valtteri did a better job at the end of the day,” Hamilton admitted. “I’m not sure how he was able to get his tyres working. I saw a glimpse of grip on the last lap but it was short-lived.

“It didn’t feel bad on Thursday when we had slightly better pace; we were closer to the front on Thursday. But we’ve not gone in the right direction since then and this was the result of that.

“Today was a question of tyres, the tyres just not working the whole way through qualifying and just sliding around. I don’t really have the answers to why. I kind of know.”

It led Hamilton to engage in some “tough discussions” with Mercedes following qualifying in a bid to understand where things went so badly wrong, and how it can be rectified in the future. 

“You can see in the other races we’re very strong in the race but the Ferraris and Red Bull definitely have better capabilities in getting their tyres working and we as a team didn’t do a good enough job in providing us with the opportunity to do the same,” he added. 

“It’s frustrating because it leads you down a path where there’s no gains in that direction. Today being a lot cooler, we paid the price.

“There will be tough discussions I will have with my engineers tonight or maybe after the weekend because there are things that should have been done which haven’t been, and things which have been which shouldn’t have been.

“We’ll learn from it and come back stronger.”

Speaking in a later media session, Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said his side had carried out a “very productive and tough debriefing” and revealed that Mercedes failed to back Hamilton’s favoured set-up direction after Thursday’s running.

“This team has a brutal honesty and transparency within itself and we didn’t get things right,” Wolff conceded. 

“It’s not completely clear yet how all the tuning possibilities were interacting with each other, but I would say we were not having enough grip in each of those runs and probably linked to tyre temperature.

“Again, we need to analyse that, but one thing is for sure, we were not competitive. We did not provide Lewis with the right car to build up the confidence and based on a good gripping car that he would like to have.

"There was one particular aspect of tyre heating we discussed this morning and on Thursday night where we could have taken a different direction and a direction he [Hamilton] was interested to pursue but we didn’t.” 

And Wolff believes the problem is one Mercedes is likely to face whenever there are cold temperatures over the course of the season. 

“If you can’t get the tyres up to temperature here whilst maintaining the peak grip of the tyre in lap one or two, you’re just lost,” he concluded. 

“This is something, whilst the characteristics of our car is going to help us in most of the races this season, it wasn’t best today due to the temperature and lack of grip. 

“That is something that we might have in this season to come when it’s cold. It’s something we will learn from today.”