Hamilton due luck as Mercedes unpick data ahead of Spain return

Mercedes

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Hamilton due luck as Mercedes unpick data ahead of Spain return

Safety cars have cost Hamilton this season

Ian Parkes

Tuesday 17 May 2022 11:40

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff is hopeful luck will finally aid Lewis Hamilton's cause this season given the seven-time F1 champion has suffered miserably with safety car incidents.

Since last year's controversial ending to the season when a safety car period worked against Hamilton and denied him a record-breaking eighth title, the 37-year-old has continued to see events conspire against him this year.

In Saudi Arabia and the most recent race in Miami, in particular, Hamilton has twice been caught out by safety cars which have cost him positions and points.

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Conversely, in Miami, team-mate George Russell benefitted considerably from the introduction of the safety car following a crash involving McLaren's Lando Norris and Pierre Gasly in his AlphaTauri.

Reflecting on the inaugural Miami event, Wolff said: "With the third quickest car underneath us, we extracted the maximum points possible.

"Considering George's start position, it was a great recovery drive, helped by when the safety car was deployed.

"But the timing was unfortunate for Lewis who was strong all weekend and on course to score P5 without the neutralisation of the race.

"I've no doubt that over the course of the season, a little luck will eventually go his way."

Mercedes seeking to build on 'flashes of true potential' in Miami

For the race around the Hard Rock Stadium, Mercedes introduced its first significant upgrade of the season, with the W13s fitted with new front and rear wings.

Throughout Friday practice, the developments appeared to offer an improvement in performance, only for Mercedes to then pursue more downforce going into Saturday qualifying and lose its way.

Ahead of this weekend's Spanish Grand Prix, Wolff is hopeful the time spent between the two events results in his team making further strides towards title pacesetters Ferrari and Red Bull. "During Friday practice [in Miami], the car showed flashes of its true potential," added Wolff.

"We continued experimenting with set-up, fitted some new components and that provided us answers and indications of which direction to go in. "A huge amount of hard work has been going on in the factories to unpick the data from Miami and turn it into improvements for Barcelona.

"Having run there in winter testing, albeit with a car that has evolved a lot since then, it will be a good place to correlate the information we have on the current car and we're hopeful we'll make another step forward. "The track itself is a good all-rounder, so it really puts every aspect of the car to the test. "In basketball terms, we head to Barcelona at the end of the first quarter of the game.

"We know that once we translate the learnings we've made into track performance, there's still a lot of the game left to play."