F1 Analysis: Was Lewis Hamilton compromised by 'experimental set-ups' in the Chinese GP?

Lewis Hamilton's F1 Chinese GP was a tale of two halves. The first half was the sprint portion of the weekend, where things couldn't have been more perfect. The driver qualified in the front row and finished P2.

This was a result that bore completely out of the brilliant qualifying session he put together on Friday, coupled with an impressive start, where he got the jump on Lando Norris.

This was the first time this season that Lewis Hamilton finished ahead of his teammate George Russell. It was a brilliant performance all around and gave him hope for the rest of the weekend.

The weekend consisted of a qualifying session on Saturday, followed by the race on Sunday, where Hamilton's weekend unraveled. He had a disastrous qualifying session, getting eliminated in Q1. For the race, he started P18 and finished P9.

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What Lewis Hamilton said about his weekend

There was a lot said about the contributing factors that played a role in such a slump in form. According to Lewis Hamilton, it came down to him making far too many changes to the car, and the set-up cost him a better result in qualifying.

This was something Hamilton touched on multiple times. He talked about it after his qualifying session. Talking to Sky F1, he said:

"I made massive changes into qualifying. It wasn’t too bad in some places. I couldn’t stop in Turn 14. It is what it is.

"This morning George (Russell) and I had very similar car, but this afternoon we’re trying to experiment still with the car, so I went one way a long way, and he went the other way just to see if we could find anything."

He added:

"That’s what we need to do at the moment, but it didn’t work. I’ll give it my best shot. … 18th is pretty bad. When I was making the set-up changes, I was like ‘it can’t get any worse, surely’, and it did. S*** happens."

George Russell had a slightly contradicting take on the set-up direction. He felt that both he and Lewis Hamilton had a somewhat similar direction even though both made significant changes to the car after the sprint race. He told the media including Sportskeeda:

“We’re pretty similar on the set-ups. We both went in a similar direction. There was a small difference. But yeah, directionally very similar between the two of us."

After Lewis Hamilton's race in China, the driver once again stressed how the set-up change proved to be a limiting factor. He promptly came on the team radio and apologized for the direction he insisted on taking for the race.

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What does the data suggest?

Let's take a look at the data, which would help clarify what happened with the Mercedes. What we will take a look at is the comparative performance of Lewis Hamilton and George Russell in qualifying.

We're using Russell as a benchmark because that would give an idea about what possible discrepancies were there for Hamilton with his experimental setup. First, let's take a look at the first flying lap of both Hamilton and George in Q1. The two drivers were separated by less than two-tenths of a second.

Just before the braking point after the long straight, George was a tenth faster than Hamilton. After the final sequence of corners, Russell gained another tenth on his older compatriot and was eventually a couple of tenths ahead after the first flying lap.

On the final flying lap for both Russell and Hamilton, the latter overshot his braking point after the long straight. Hamilton was once again only a tenth behind George as he approached the braking point. It was after he made the mistake that he lost four more tenths, which cost him a position in Q2.

Looking at the qualifying data, we can see that Lewis Hamilton would have made it to Q2 if he was only a tenth quicker than the lap he eventually set. George Russell eventually showed what the car was capable of, as he qualified inside the top-10 and finished P6.

Lewis Hamilton wasn't too far behind George in terms of pace and could have achieved a similar result. He was P9 in the race, and even in a straightforward race weekend, where he didn't make a mistake in qualifying, he could have jumped one or two positions and finish closer to Russell.

The compromised result in the Chinese GP was not a consequence of Lewis Hamilton having the wrong setup on his car. It was a result of the driver not putting together a strong enough lap in qualifying.

Hence, while the direction the car took post his experimental set-up was not ideal, it wasn't the reason behind his compromised race in China.