Aero EXPERT explains why Mercedes rear wing decision helped Hamilton

Mercedes brought a significant aero update package to Spa, showing signs of them converging to the aero trends on other top F1 cars on this grid. In a qualifying session which went from wet to dry between the Q1, Q2, and Q3 sessions, everyone found themselves in a 'track evolution game'.

The later you could set the lap, the higher your chances were of securing a top position. However, what was distinctively different was that Mercedes decided to go to onto two different setups on George Russell and Lewis Hamilton's cars.

Hamilton preferred a low drag setup, while Russell chose a high downforce setup which eventually led to him being at a disadvantage. In this article, let us dissect how Hamilton's low drag setup put him on the front row of the grid for Sunday.

Visual differences

Aerodynamically, you can see from the above image the rear wing differences between the two drivers. Hamilton's wing is much 'flatter' and hence less draggy, while Russell's rear wing is deeper, thus producing more downforce and thus more resistance.

Track Dominance Plots

From these track dominance plots, we can see that Hamilton is faster in all the high-speed sections of the track. He’s faster in all the traction zones as well.

This setup really worked well for Hamilton, there is definitely more to this than just the rear wing setup as it's impressive that he can match Russell on all the exits of slow and medium-speed corners as well.

Telemetry Data Analysis

The telemetry plots clearly show that Hamilton was around ~5 km/hr faster across all the traction zones leading to straights. When we look at the delta plot we can see that Hamilton was faster than his team-mate across the entire track as the delta increases linearly over the entire lap.

Shubham Sangodkar is a former F1 Aerodynamicist with a Masters in Racing Car Design specialising in F1 Aerodynamics and F1 Data Analysis. He also posts aerodynamics content on his YouTube channel, which can be found here.

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