Mercedes believes that Lewis Hamilton has benefited more than his teammate George Russell from the progress made in the W15 car.
The German manufacturer has had a difficult start to the season, and its 2024 car has proved erratic and has a narrow performance window.
However, as the team discovered the secrets of its potential, the car moved towards the front of the grid – where it won three of the last four races.
That step forward also coincided with Hamilton being able to get more out of it, having struggled against Russell in the early stages of the season.
Mercedes racing director Andrew Shovlin believes that Hamilton’s form is much better now because he struggled with the characteristics of the car in its infancy.
“I think in the beginning Lewis may have had a harder time handling the car,” explained Shovlin.
“One of the areas we have improved with the car is the ability to land the settings in the first practice which is a good basis to start building performance and then fine-tune them. It helps your weekend a lot.”
“In the first part of the year, we made relatively small changes and suddenly the whole car left us and we really struggled.”
“And, yes, it’s probably fair to say that in the earlier races Lewis had a harder time setting up than George.”
Mercedes and Hamilton are aware that the current generation of cars and ground effect tires are not ideal for the driving style of the seven-time champion, as he cannot use his full braking potential.
However, as Mercedes unlocked more speed from the car, Shovlin says both drivers now demand similar things from him.
“There is a certain driving style that suits these tires. You tend to find that the two drivers are now not that far apart in the settings.”
“So when the car is in a good frame, the same thing works pretty well for both of them. And between sessions, they study what others are doing to try to figure out where the gains are.”
“But within a year, the two of them worked together. In the beginning, neither of them wanted to end up where we were, and they were able to help each other by trying different experiments with settings and riding style. All in all, you progress as a team, and that’s how a team works through two drivers.”
Shovlin admitted that the first races were a special challenge for everyone because the team felt close to the top, but did not finish in the positions they wanted.
“In the first part of the year, a lot of things were quite frustrating, because we were finishing fifth, sixth, seventh, and often you would see that with just one more tenth of a performance, we would be three places higher in the standings. So, we have made progress,” he claims.
“That’s why we can now finish on the podium. But regardless of whether the car is fast or not fast enough, if it’s slow, the drivers are always there to help us try and know what the next step is, where is the best place for us to spend our development resource and try to turn it into performance.”
“That hasn’t changed: simply with a faster car, everything is much more fun.”
