Why Hamilton loses the duel to Russell in qualifying

''George has always set a very high bar in qualifying and from as soon as he was in F1 he was impressive, even in the Williams he was doing some pretty impressive qualifying sessions. We know that he's very quick,'' Mercedes' key man said in Friday's press conference.

''Lewis hasn't disguised the fact that Saturdays were his tough day. He’s struggled with this whole generation of car really not suiting his style. He's been working on how he drives but we had a huge amount of work trying to get the car to be quicker. It just hasn't been quick enough. But also with a handling balance that the drivers can actually attack the lap on Saturday.'' Shovlin explained.

Why is Hamilton struggling with this generation of cars?

Shovlin also stresses that the differences between the two drivers are very small. ''George has out-qualified Lewis by some fairly fine margins, so it's great for the team that Lewis is back up there and he'll be pushing on. But we'll keep working on that and I'm sure that we'll see hopefully some more Lewis pole positions as well.''

In the third year of the new regulations, Lewis Hamilton appears to still be struggling with this generation of cars. According to the Mercedes chief, Hamilton has had to adapt his driving style and has still not quite succeeded. Shovlin was then asked in the press conference how this could be, considering Hamilton was always considered a driver who could adapt to any car.

''Particularly he struggled on the single lap. So his long-run pace is always there. And that's been really useful. It's more just the way that he wants to attack a corner. When you do that, then the car would snap to oversteer. You start to build tyre temperature. So most of our work has been trying to give him a car that you can drive the very attacking style, extract the lap time out of it without it just sort of breaking away on the way in and catching him by surprise.'' Shovlin concluded.