George Russell leading Lewis Hamilton by 8-1 in qualifying head-to-head this season was probably not among the early predictions for Formula 1 fans.
After qualifying for the Monaco Grand Prix, the seven-time world champion said that he did not “anticipate” beating Russell for the remainder of the year after his teammate ran the only new front wing available during the weekend.
The pair agreed that Russell could run it at the track due to the risks associated with crashing in Monaco, as any damage in qualifying would have meant a specification change and required a pit lane start for the race.
Mercedes technical director, James Allison, was also surprised by the deficit given Hamilton’s status as statistically F1’s greatest qualifier when speaking to the Beyond the Grid podcast.
James Allison responds to Lewis Hamilton’s claim
Mercedes has shown significant progress in the last three races, having introduced several prominent upgrades which enabled Russell to fight for the pole at the Canadian Grand Prix.
Allision pointed out that there should be no reason why Hamilton is unable to extract the same performance from his car as his compatriot.
“Well, I think if you just look at the stats, 8-1, then maybe, well, it was 7-1 back then, but maybe it would be reasonable to think if that trend continues, there won’t be many times when he’ll be on pole. I think that if you try and read into that stuff that isn’t there, like there’s somehow he’s got a systematic disadvantage on qualifying day, that’s not true and not fair. So far as we can make it, the cars are identical,” said Allison.
“The engine use is identical. If the cars are different on setup, it’s because that’s what the driving engineering team on either side of the garage have iterated to, but they can have identical stuff if they choose. On one occasion this year and famously in Monaco, they had a different front wing on the car because we only had one available and we took the decision that we would get that[…]”
What has happened to Lewis Hamilton’s qualifying pace?
Drivers have pointed out that the tyres this year can be tricky to get into the right operating window for qualifying. Even though they are the same specification as last year, drivers tend to have blistering pace in practice followed by a performance drop-off later in the day.
Drivers have also found that having a used set of soft tyres in their first run in Q3 puts them out of sync for their final run, as they have to relearn their reference points on a new set of softs.
Hamilton has often vented his frustration over the change in performance he has experienced, notably at this year’s Bahrain Grand Prix when he qualified on the fifth row alongside Nico Hulkenberg.
His session was characterised by being unable to find a quarter of a second that would have made the difference in lap time, while the Briton claimed his car was set up in anticipation of the race.
The poor qualifying performances are often what leads to Hamilton struggling to convert his race pace into higher finishing positions in the Grand Prix, with him only just beating his best finishing position of sixth at Canada.
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