Mercedes after Hamilton out in Q1: 'Should have followed Russell's setup'

For Lewis Hamilton, Saturday was a day of ups and downs at the Chinese Grand Prix. First, a second-place finish in the sprint race, but then a Q1 exit in qualifying followed. Technical director James Allison looks back in Mercedes' debrief on Lewis Hamilton's early elimination in the battle for pole position.

Hamilton drove only two timed laps in Q1 and did not join the top 15 drivers. Whereas Russell brought along enough fuel to do two fast runs, the seven-time world champion had fuel for just one flying lap. "I would say, well I don’t need to guess about this because Lewis was absolutely explicit about it afterwards, he said he really wished he had taken the same approach that George had taken," Allison said.

The new parc fermé rules allow for adjustments to the cars between the sprint race and qualifying. Hamilton did just that and had to get used to how the W15 reacted to the adjustments.

"He’d found that the changes he’d made had made the car more understeery, they’d made it easier for the car to lock up under the braking and he was just pinching those front brakes in a way that was causing him difficulties," the top man explained. "I think we all saw what happened on his second run, which was only his second timed lap therefore, he just running down the main straight into that bottom hairpin, he just got a little bit out of shape on the braking, went deep and that’s 0.7 of a second just there."

Mercedes and Hamilton both raise their hands

Without that mistake, Hamilton would have easily reached Q3. "So he would hold his hand up and say “my mistake, my error”. I think we would be a little more rounded and say we should have actually encouraged more strongly that he was pursuing a programme a bit more like George’s," Allison thinks.

Allison concluded: "That’s our mistake and we should frankly be making a car that is just not so tricky as the one we've got at the moment which is causing the drivers to make very uncharacteristic errors. We have two of the best drivers in the world and locking up at the end of a straight."

Hamilton eventually finished in P9 on Sunday, good for two points in the standings. Russell crossed the line in P6 at the Shanghai International Circuit.