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George Russell has refuted Lewis Hamilton's claims about changing the setup directions mid-race weekend at the 2024 Bahrain GP.
Mercedes endured a divergent race weekend, with Russell securing a top three qualifying position, while Hamilton was in P9. The race saw both drivers suffer from power unit issues, as Russell finished the race in P5 and Hamilton finished in P7.
After qualifying, however, Hamilton explained that one of the reasons behind his qualifying result was that he went on a divergent route after free practice. He claimed that since the cars suffered a bit in the long runs, he went on a setup more suited to the race compared to Russell.
Talking to the media, including Sportskeeda, George Russell was questioned about Lewis Hamilton going on a divergent setup. The Mercedes driver clarified that this was not the case as both cars were quite similar and said:
“Many people have said this. I don’t really know the big differences, to be honest, because as far as I’m aware with the cars we’re pretty similar. I don’t really focus too much on his set-up. Mine was actually more set up for the race than the set-up he ran. At least it was on Friday [for qualifying].”
What did Lewis Hamilton say about the car setup?
After qualifying, Lewis Hamilton claimed that while he was comfortable with the car in free practice, he decided to go in a different direction for the rest of the weekend to have the car more aligned with the race. The driver was close to three-tenths slower than George Russell in qualifying and that was the difference between a P3 and P9.
After qualifying, Hamilton told the media:
“[On Thursday] during my work, we were doing identical car setups, and I was feeling great. We veered off – he went one way, and I went the other. You could say that the one I was on is not good on a single lap, but I hope it’s good in the race. I wasn’t comfortable with my race pace [in practice]. So I changed the car to hopefully make the race pace better but we’ll see if that’s really the case.”
Both drivers suffered issues with the power unit during the race. While this curtailed Russell's fight to score a podium finish, it limited Hamilton's progress through the field to P7.
