Lewis Hamilton rues ‘night and day different’ Mercedes after Austin comedown
Lewis Hamilton puts a hand to his head.
After challenging for the win at the US Grand Prix, Friday practice in Mexico brought Lewis Hamilton crashing back down as the unpredictable Mercedes W14 struck again.
Mercedes were revelling in a marked step forward with their upgraded floor at the US Grand Prix, Hamilton having fallen just two seconds short of race winner Max Verstappen.
Hamilton would be disqualified post-race, along with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, due to excessive plank wear on their respective challengers, but the momentum had been provided nonetheless.
Lewis Hamilton claims Mercedes W14 “night and day different”
Such momentum hit a roadblock though on Friday at the Mexican Grand Prix, Hamilton a second off Verstappen’s pace in FP1, before narrowing the deficit to three-tenths.
Nonetheless, Hamilton is not getting the same feeling from the W14 as he did in Austin, with the search now on for answers.
“Not the greatest, bit of a struggle in the car today,” he said as he reflected on the Mexican GP Friday running.
“I mean, the car’s complete night and day different compared to last week. I don’t really know what to say, you just never know what you’re going to get with this one.
“Some days she’s great and some days she’s not. I think it’s hard to extract the lap, I think there is definitely performance there, it’s just trying to extract it and it’s quite picky this weekend, maybe just with the aero map or whatever it may be.
“So we’re going to work on it overnight, but definitely it wasn’t a fun day compared to P1 in Austin.
“We were a bit off but hopefully overnight, we can find something and tomorrow, maybe the car will be nicer to drive.”
And that unpredictability means Hamilton could not offer up any expectations heading into qualifying Saturday.
“不知道,”他承认在排位赛的主题expectations. “Again, you never know what to expect with this car. Maybe we’ll make the changes and we’ll pick that pace up.
“我认为肯定有一些性能there to be closer to maybe in the top three, but we’ve got to figure out how to make it easier for us to be able to extract that performance, so that’s what we’re working on tonight.”
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Hamilton’s team-mate George Russell felt that they both had failed to find the ideal operating window for the W14 on Friday, suggesting they need to meet in the middle to hit the sweet spot.
Therefore, he sees a lot of potential still in the W14 to extract.
“It’s a very tight field out there, but I think there is potential,” he said.
“I think we’ve got a lot of work to do overnight. Very tight, especially with some unexpected cars to be honest, you saw some cars in the top 10 that we weren’t expecting to be there.
“But we feel like we’ve got a lot to improve, but we also feel like we’ve got the opportunity to do it as well.
“It’s going to be a very tricky race on Sunday and I think that’s why qualifying is going to be key.
“I think Lewis and I were running two different setups and we probably both weren’t in the right window. So that’s given us an indication that probably halfway between both is the right place to be.
“So it’s frustrating in the moment to have a sort of negative car and not have had the best of days, but through those difficult moments you learn probably more than when the car is in a better place.”
Russell would welcome a strong showing in Mexico, the Brit without a podium since the Spanish Grand Prix, his only top-three finish of the season so far, while he is now 58 points behind Hamilton in theDrivers’ Championship.
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