Lewis Hamilton and George Russell said small changes to the configuration of their Mercedes have made a major difference to a car which was only the fifth-quickest at the start of the year.
Russell beat Hamilton to pole position for the British Grand Prix today. It is the first time Mercedes have locked out the front row of the grid based on qualifying times since the technical regulations changed in 2022.
After two seasons pursuing a similar car design philosophy, Mercedes changed their approach for this year. Since then they have gradually improved their car’s performance.
Russell took pole position for the Canadian Grand Prix, albeit after setting an identical lap time to Max Verstappen, and won the Austrian Grand Prix after the Red Bull driver collided with Lando Norris.
After leading the team to their first one-two in a conventional qualifying session since the 2021 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, Russell said minor tweaks have made a significant difference to the W15’s performance.
“We’ve made some small changes which have had a big impact,” he said. “We knew from the start of this year [that] the baseline of this car is substantially better than what we’ve had in previous years.
“But we went from having an ‘oversteer car’ last year, then to an ‘understeer car’ this year. And now we’ve just dialled it back and found the happy medium.
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“When you’ve got the balance in a good place, the tyre temperatures are in the right window, and the lap time just really snowballs positively. It hasn’t been a substantial change, but it’s made a massive difference to the lap time.”
Hamilton agreed the team has made a “massive difference” to its car’s performance in recent races.
“It’s just better everywhere,” he said. “[In] Bahrain, for example, the car felt terrible, and… we made [progress] in terms of dialling and fine-tuning the car to optimise the aero package.”
He believes the team has finally been able to channel its development potential in a useful direction with a ground effect-era car.
“This team has never struggled to add performance, but where particularly they put that performance has always been, with this generation of car, has been a big question and where we’re getting the downforce from. But now they’ve done an amazing job, the engineers back at the factory.”
However Hamilton sounded a note of caution that Mercedes haven’t yet proved as…
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