Lewis Hamilton’s US GP suspension issue “put to bed” after Mercedes fix

James Allison has confirmed the suspension issue which impacted Lewis Hamilton’s sprint race performance at the United States Grand Prix “did not feature” once the problem was “put to bed” ahead of qualifying.

Hamilton struggled for pace in the sprint event at the Circuit of the Americas on Saturday.

He finished a lacklustre sixth, three seconds behind Mercedes teammate George Russell.

After the sprint, Mercedes realised there was an issue with Hamilton’s car, noticing a broken bearing.

While it was rectified for qualifying, Hamilton was ultimately knocked out in Q1 before spinning out of the race, capping off a miserable weekend for the seven-time world champion.

Shedding light on how Merceded dealt with the issue in Austin, Allison said on Mercedes’ YouTube channel: “Anyone who watched it on the TV would have heard Lewis saying, “I can feel it clicking.” – “I can feel it clicking”.

“When we stripped the car after the Sprint race, a race in which he struggled to get the car’s handling to be sweet-natured, we found that one of the bearings that holds one of the wishbones on had started to break up.

“That was making it move around and giving him that clicking noise, which also was associated with inconsistent handling, which is the main reason he was feeling the back end of the car, even though it is a front-end problem. It translates to the car feeling loose and unpredictable and that had an impact on his race in the Sprint.”

Allison confirmed that the issue was resolved ahead of qualifying and it didn’t resurface again later in the weekend.

“Had we fixed it entirely by qualifying? Yes, we had replaced that part, and that problem did not re-emerge,” Allison added.

“So it was a pain for us to have suffered that problem, difficult for Lewis to then have the Sprint race that way, but that issue was put to bed by qualy and did not feature thereafter.”