F1 News
The weird reason behind Hamilton's slow quali in USA!
Lewis Hamilton's P5 qualifying in Austin was his worst of the season, and Mercedes' chief strategist James Vowles has revealed the strange reason behind his poor lap. The disappointing qualifying did not stop him from taking the title however, as he made his way up to P2 to secure his sixth title.
Such has been Hamilton's consistency this season, fifth position was his worst Saturday of the year and it was because of the Brit flicking an engine braking switch through the lap, as mentioned by Vowles in Mercedes' United States GP debrief.
He said: "During the course of the lap, underneath his right hand there's a little rotary and that rotary adjusts the engine braking. Normally it has a guard on it and what happened is the guard had accidentally been knocked off; as he went through the lap, every time he turned the steering wheel, he accidentally changed the engine braking and that caused him to lose performance towards the end of the lap.
"A mechanic spotted it immediately, the second the car had come back in, but obviously that first run was compromised as a result.
"Come the second you run, you would have seen everyone went slower. The track in fact had slowed down slightly – small wind change, small track temperature change – and Lewis wasn't now able to compete at the front, ultimately sealing his place as fifth on the grid."