Lewis Hamilton admitted he isn’t comfortable in Mercedes’ latest car this weekend after being out-qualified by his team mate again.
Speaking after qualifying eighth on the grid behind George Russell for today’s race, Hamilton said the the team’s extensive changes to its latest design hadn’t stopped the car bouncing at high speeds on the Jeddah Corniche Circuit despite .
“It’s similar to previous years,” he told Sky. “There are so many elements of this car which are which are better, it’s just we’ve been hindered by the bouncing that we have through [turns] six, seven, eight, nine, ten, which I think probably affected George [too].”
Mercedes “have not been able to fix” the problem consistently, said Hamilton, who explained it had come and gone during practice for this weekend’s race.
“We made some changes overnight and this morning car the felt so much better, I was regaining this confidence again. And then when we get to qualifying, it disappears again.
“But George is doing a great job. He’s a lot more comfortable in the car. A bit similar to the past couple of years, I would say.
“But we will keep our heads down, we’ll keep working away. I got a bit of a better feeling as to where the issue is coming from so I will try and address it for the team.”
The consistently high speeds F1 cars corner at in Jeddah appear to have exacerbated the problem, said Hamilton.
“We’ve tried every set-up change. We can’t get rid of it. It’s difficult to explain it, we had some bouncing in Bahrain, but nowhere near is as intense as here.
“That first sector is super-high-speed, there’s a lot of yaw in the car and a lot of lateral load, and the bouncing really upsets the car quite a bit.
“If you imagine when the car goes up and down at the back, your balance shifts forwards and rearwards. If you’re doing that at 160, 170 miles an hour, correcting that each time is really… the others that are going, for example Max [Verstappen] is flat through six, seven, eight and the balance is just stable.
“That’s what we’re working towards. We’ve got to fix it, it’s like three years in a row, we’ve got to get on top of it.”
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
2024 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at RaceFans…