Lewis Hamilton has 'made himself a victim' with experimental setups, reckons Mercedes director

Lewis Hamilton's willingness to learn more about the car and experiment with the setup has made him more of a victim. That's the view of Mercedes director Andrew Shovlin, as he explains how the driver has ended up getting the short end of the stick far too many times this season.

This happened in the F1 Chinese GP this season where Lewis Hamilton had a brilliant run in the sprint. In the transition from the sprint to the Grand Prix part of the weekend, both Mercedes drivers made wholesale changes to the car.

For George Russell, he would qualify in the top 10 with the Mercedes but for Lewis Hamilton, he could not do that. He made a mistake in Q1 at the hairpin after the long straight. He attributed the mistake later to the setup changes that unsettled him on the car.

Talking to AMuS, Andrew Shovlin revealed how Lewis Hamilton had fallen victim to the experiments made on the car. He said,

“It’s mainly about learning more about the car. Lewis in particular is open to big set-up changes this year. He wants to learn more about where he can get the most out of the car. He made himself a victim a few times. But if you don’t change anything, you won’t learn anything. It would be wrong to say: That’s just the way things are, let’s make the best of it."

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Shovlin explains what happened with Lewis Hamilton in China

Andrew Shovlin further explained what happened with Lewis Hamilton in China. Since there's no track time or time to check at the simulator the changes that any team makes to the car, the Mercedes drivers were going in blind into the qualifying.

As a result, they only had two laps to get used to the car and then extract a strong lap out of it. Lewis Hamilton was unable to do it and hence made a mistake at the hairpin and lost time. Shovlin revealed,

“We were no longer able to validate the changes we made between sprint and qualification in the simulator. There wasn’t enough time for that. And what he had changed in the vehicle provoked too much understeer. During the sprint, both drivers had the feeling that a lot of the cars could be improved, especially in the slow corners."

He added,

"Both thought big changes were needed. Both then took different paths to find out more about the set-up behaviour of this car. The problem you run into is that with such a set-up change the driver hardly has time to get used to the effects."

It will be interesting to see what the team does in the future because lack of understanding of the car and the drivers being forced to run experimental setups has proven to be detrimental most of the time.