“Not obvious” - Mercedes to investigate Lewis Hamilton’s Brazil setup woes

Mercedes have admitted it’s “not obvious” what caused Lewis Hamilton’s difficult F1 Sao Paulo Grand Prix.

Hamilton bemoaned a lack of rear grip at Interlagos as he struggled with the handling of his W15.

The seven-time world champion finished a lowly 10th as he failed to make it into Q3 in both qualifying sessions.

It was a poor weekend for Hamilton, who often thrives in wet conditions throughout his career.

On the other side of the Mercedes garage, teammate George Russell qualified on the front row of the grid before leading the first portion of the race.

Had Mercedes followed Russell’s strategy suggestion, he could have potentially won the race.

Speaking on the team’s YouTube channel, trackside engineering chief Andrew Shovlin spoke about the issues Hamilton faced in Brazil.

“Normally you are able to do it [set up the two cars],” he said. “You let the drivers deviate with the setup.

“They do not have to run the same, and we will let them evolve their own setup. And when one of them appears to be going well, you often take elements of that setup, or even the whole lot, and put it onto the other car.

“Now, it is fair to say Lewis was struggling predominantly with a lack of rear grip. If we look at how he had set up his car, it is not obvious where that was coming from.

“But in the Sprint race, as soon as you have got less grip and you are getting the snaps of oversteer on exit, you generate more temperature. That in itself will prolong the problem.

“As with any race, we spend a lot of time digging into the data, trying to understand it, and Lewis’ engineering crew will be working with him on this issue, trying to make sure we get to the bottom of it before Vegas.”

Shovlin believes the varying weather in Brazil contributed to Hamilton’s struggles.

“The other factor with the weekend was the conditions were very different,” he added.

“Sprint qualy, Sprint race, that was in the dry, it was very hot and then the main qualy and the Grand Prix were in the wet. We did not have the session-after-session flow to iterate the setup and understand how to get the most out of the car.

“That is not the reason for the issue, but was certainly something that made it more difficult for him to get the setup that he wanted on for the race.”