Luis Hamilton, defended by Toto Wolf after qualifying for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix
Mercedes Luis Hamilton Formula One boss Toto Wolfe defended Lewis Hamilton after team-mate George Russell knocked out the seven-times champion for a third successive season.
Luis Hamilton finished seventh at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Two places and 0.212 seconds behind Russell, who was 1.353 seconds adrift of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.
Wolfe said Hamilton tried a different setup for his car as the team attempted to resolve its performance issues.
“Lewis is testing some pretty experimental parts of the car, and there are other floor solutions for his car that don’t work,” Wolff said.
Although Hamilton had lost to Russell in Spain, Monaco, and Baku, Wolff said it was “too early to identify a model.”
Wolff said: “I was very close, and I saw that one unit was faster than the other. And because cars are on the cutting edge, if you put your foot in the wrong direction, in terms of experimenting with cars. That must be done to learn how to work and where to put the car there are 0.2- 0.3 seconds immediately in between.
“And in the last three races, the experiment went wrong with Lewis, not George. So Russell has a five or three lead in qualifying Mercedes drivers. But three overall if only counting races where a fair comparison can be made, and then Hamilton is slightly faster on average.
Wolf said Hamilton’s car had a different setup in Baku, exacerbating the bottom issue Mercedes faced this season.
“The car spins a lot more and gets to a point where it becomes dangerous and can’t achieve efficiency anymore,” he said.
Soil has been a significant problem for Mercedes this season.
The team thought they could improve on this with a new floor design unveiled ahead of the two Spanish Grand Prix.
But while that appears to have solved the guinea pig an aerodynamic problem caused by impaired airflow under the car – the car still had too many crashes in its path.
Russell said: “The ground is extreme. Finally, we reached the top of the guinea pig.