F1 News
Hamilton expects Mercedes issues in Austria to reoccur at hot Grand Prix's
Lewis Hamilton has revealed that the issues that Mercedes had at the Austrian Grand Prix could be one that comes back to haunt them at other races this season. Both Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas had problems with cooling their cars due to the hot air and track temperatures. It is thought that if another circuit is as hot then the team will struggle once again.
"Fundamentally the car doesn't have big enough radiators," Mercedes Engineer Andrew Shovlin said in the team's post-race debrief video. "We were a bit optimistic about how much we could get out of the cooling system.
"It's under-delivered to what we hoped we could achieve, and it's meant that we are carrying this issue where in the very hot races we will be struggling to keep everything cool enough, principally to keep the power unit cool enough that we don't do any damage to it.
"In Austria, it was 35C, that actually put us at the upper end of what we could achieve just by opening the car up. So, we were on the limit. When you get to that point you are really limited in your options.
Hamilton is worried that the problems will happen again at the other hot climates that Formula 1 travels to this season.
“We’ve got Budapest coming up but who knows at other places," Hamilton said. "I don’t think it will be in a lot of places but I’m sure they’ll be another one like that, like Mexico maybe.”
Mercedes will be hoping to either fix the issue or hope that the sun doesn't shine during the Grand Prix weekends!