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Lewis Hamilton's poor showing in the 2022 F1 Saudi Arabian GP was down to Mercedes' exploration with his car set up going a bit too far, according to Andrew Shovlin.
Shovlin is the trackside engineering director for the Silver Arrows. Explaining the reasons behind this dismal showing for the seven-time world champion in a post-race interview, he said:
“Well, there’s a few reasons but fundamentally, we don’t really understand the car yet as well as we do it at the end of the year, we’ve only had two races with it. So, we are always exploring the setup with Lewis, trying to find a direction that delivers performance and we’d found a good direction from Friday into Saturday that he was able to try in the third practice session. We went quite a bit further on that into the qualifying session, but ultimately it was a bit too far.”
Lewis Hamilton was knocked out in the first qualifying session before starting P15 in the race. The Briton struggled for pace and grip throughout the weekend, eventually leaving Jeddah with a solitary point in P10.
Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes W13 is not fast enough, admits Andrew Shovlin
Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes W13 is not fast enough to compete at the front of the grid with the Ferrari F1-75 and the Red Bull RB18.
After being well off the pace at the world's fastest street circuit on the banks of the Red Sea, Mercedes' Andrew Shovlin admitted that Hamilton was missing rear grip throughout. During the aforementioned interview, he said:
“From the word go, he was lacking rear grip, Jeddah is a street circuit that you need a lot of confidence, it’s very fast, the walls are very close and when you haven’t got the rear grip, the driver can’t have that confidence. Ultimately, we pushed it a bit too far but it was a useful learning exercise. Fundamentally though, the problem right now is the car is not fast enough and unless we get it perfect, we are going to be at risk in those sessions. So, we need to make a quicker car as soon as possible.”
Mercedes will be hoping for a turn of fortunes when F1 returns to the Albert Park Circuit in Melbourne for the 2022 Australian GP.
