Lewis Hamilton struggled to recover from a pit lane start in Baku, and later revealed he was hampered by a component that “wasn’t correctly built” and led Mercedes down the wrong path.
Qualifying ninth around the Baku street circuit on Saturday, Mercedes changed Hamilton’s suspension overnight while also fitting his W15 with a full new power unit that was beyond his allocation for the season.
Lewis Hamilton explains ‘drive this thing’ radio message
Breaking parc ferme conditions meant he lined up in the pit lane for Sunday’s 51-lap Azerbaijan Grand Prix, but even with the fresh engine and changes to his car, he wasn’t able to make an attack on the top ten.
Running outside the points for much of the Grand Prix, he was stuck down in 14th place for several laps as he was thwarted by the Haas of rookie driver Oliver Bearman.
Hamilton: “Are you seeing how I have to drive this thing?”
Pete Bonnington: “Copy that Lewis. It’s effective though.”
Hamilton finally overtook Bearman to run just outside the points before a late crash involving Carlos Sainz and Sergio Perez elevated him to ninth place. He was, however, a minute down on his team-mate George Russell who inherited P3 from the Sainz/Perez crash.
Asked about the radio message to Bono, Hamilton explained to the media in Baku: “It was the worst balance I’ve probably ever had. One of the worst balances.
“Basically I had so much front end but no rears I had to turn like this, it’s not the way you drive. I had to yank the steering to break the traction from the front, slide the front through every corner.
Lewis Hamilton’s race already undone by a component on Saturday
Even before his balance issues in the Grand Prix, Hamilton’s weekend suffered a blow on Saturday when Mercedes found a faulty component that had led them astray as they made tweaks to the car ahead of Saturday’s all-important qualifying.
That not only left him down in ninth place in qualifying, but necessitated a change ahead of Sunday’s Grand Prix with Mercedes then deciding to also fit the Briton’s W15 with an all-new power unit.
“We had a great car on Friday,” he explained, “and made the tiniest changes into Saturday. One of the components wasn’t correctly built. That led us the wrong way then on Saturday. We didn’t find out until the end of the day.
“Being this race was the best race they said at least to make the change for the engine because we need one engine as I lost one earlier. We knew it was going to be a tough day.”
