That’s all we can do right now! Hamilton complains about the performance of his Mercedes

Both Mercedes cars, Lewis Hamilton’s and Valtteri Bottas’, did not have the best start to the race weekend in Baku. Both drivers also gave their comments.

In Friday’s practice sessions, Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas produced results that not only their fans but also the drivers themselves are not used to. In the first practice session, Hamilton finished seventh and Bottas eleventh.

In FP2, both drivers even dropped outside the top ten. The seven-time world champion ended his tenure at number eleven, with his Finnish teammate as high as sixteenth!

“I’ ve actually had a really good day. I had a really good day, it was clean, I did all the laps we planned to do. I avoided any mistakes except for one lock-up. I felt like I was riding well, it was even better in the first practice. It seems that this is our current best.”

“We are all scratching our heads and we will do everything we can to improve before qualifying. The race simulations were a little bit better. Then in the afternoon it was slower, I was at the limit, but the car was not up to it. There are places where we could have been faster, but for that we would have needed better grip. We will do something about it.”

It’s grip that Mercedes is struggling with a lot right now. Problems with grip on the track were already evident in the last race in Monaco, when the veteran driver also complained of understeer problems.

Yet Mercedes is one of the teams that has the aerodynamics of the monopost brilliantly designed. It should be noted, however, that McLaren has the best solution to the problem of airflow under the car itself.

In fact, it has matured best of all to the new rules before the start of the season. These rules were designed to shorten the blades that the engineers place inside the diffuser. In fact, McLaren has combined this blade with the lowered centre section of the floor in such a way that any cut will result in a horizontal curve every time.

This has the effect of directing airflow and more efficiently exhausting air from the very bottom of the car. This provides much better downforce and makes Lando Norris’ or Daniel Ricciardo’s monoposto much more grippy on the track and in the corners.

In any case, let’s be surprised by what kind of thing Mercedes has come up with so far this race weekend. Saturday’s qualifying for Sunday’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix starts at 14:00.

Source: F1 Sport