Hamilton’s China qualifying a team error

In brief

Hamilton’s China qualifying a team error

After Lewis Hamilton was eliminated from Q1 in grand prix qualifying for the Chinese Grand Prix after changing his set-up following a successful sprint race, Mercedes technical director James Allison says the team should have been more insistent that he followed the same run plan as team mate George Russell.

“Lewis was absolutely explicit about it afterwards, he said he really wished he had taken the same approach that George had taken which was in his first run in Q1, George fuelled to do two timed laps so that he could have a feel of the car in the first flying lap, do a cool down lap and then have another bite at the cherry which would just give him more of a feel for the car,” Allison explained.

“Whereas Lewis went later in the session, one timed lap, one timed lap and Lewis was very clear afterwards that he needed another lap. He’d found that the changes he’d made had made the car more understeery, they’d made it easier for the car to lock up under the braking and he was just pinching those front brakes in a way that was causing him difficulties.

“I think we all saw what happened on his second run, which was only his second timed lap therefore, just running down the main straight into that bottom hairpin, he just got a little bit out of shape on the braking, went deep and that’s 0.7 of a second just there. That’s quite a big gap without which he would have easily got through to Q3 and whatever. So he would hold his hand up and say “my mistake, my error”.

“I think we would be a little more rounded and say we should have actually encouraged more strongly that he was pursuing a programme a bit more like George’s, so that’s our mistake and we should frankly be making a car that is just not so tricky as the one we’ve got at the moment which is causing the drivers to make very uncharacteristic errors.”

Hadjar quickest as F2 test ends

Red Bull junior Isack Hadjar went quickest of all on the final day of the in-season Formula 2 test in Barcelona ahead of Campos team mate Pepe Marti.

Hadjar’s best time in the morning session was fastest of the three-day test, fourth tenths quicker than Marti in the session with Williams junior Franco Colapinto third. Amaury Cordeel set the pace in the evening session, in which teams focused more on race simulation runs on higher…