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Mercedes on underlying problem with W13: 'It's very difficult for us'

19:30, 27 Apr 2022

byGPblog.com

The Grand Prix at Imola went far better for George Russell than for teammate Lewis Hamilton. The seven-time world champion had to watch Russell drive to P4, while he himself had to set with a 13th place. Andrew Shovlin explains why.

Hamilton was stuck in a DRS train behind Pierre Gasly for a long time. An overtake never came, but the W13 struggled to warm up the tyres in the wet and cold conditions. Shovlin explains in the debrief from Mercedes explain why Hamilton didn't make a pit stop earlier for the slicks.

"We had a car all weekend that was struggling with warming up the tyres. Going out on slick tyres on a damp track is a very challenging situation, and we really need to understand why we’ve got this warm-up problem. We know from previous races, from previous damp qualifying, that those are the conditions that Lewis excels in. He is very good in those changing conditions, but there is an underlying problem we’ve got with the car. It is very difficult for us to generate temperature, and we need to fix that before we’ll get back into a situation where we can really gamble on those changing conditions."

Frustrating position for Hamilton

It was a dramatic race for Hamilton, while teammate Russell managed to drive to fourth place from P11. "He [Hamilton] wasn’t able to get alongside, and that was why he spent the whole race rather frustratingly stuck in that position", Shovlin says of the seven-time world champion's frustrations.