Hamilton believes that a wet qualifying session flattered Mercedes
Lewis Hamilton says that an overnight change to an older spec floor has improved the Mercedes W15 at Spa – but he admits that it was only the wet conditions that allowed him to qualify fourth.
Hamilton was unhappy after Friday’s running with the latest update package, and he was only 10th fastest in FP2.
Prior to the uncertainty of the wet Saturday running the team opted to switch both Hamilton and team mate George Russell back to the floor used until Hungary to provide a stable baseline.
It paid off in wet qualifying as Hamilton took fourth and Russell seventh, with both men also set to gain a place from a grid penalty for Max Verstappen.
“If it was drying I’d be struggling to be in top 10, I would imagine,” he said. “And then I think just out there timing was everything, getting out on track at the right point.
“I think we were a little bit too early at the end, we were first out, and that was when we used our new tyres. And then we didn’t have any new tyres towards the end, when the three guys ahead did. So a bit unfortunate in that respect. But I’m grateful to be up there.
“I’m okay with being on the second row, for sure. It’s close enough. I think today, if we got everything perfect, we could have been on the front row, or even first, but it wasn’t meant to be.”
Hamilton admitted that the car was difficult to drive with the update package as used on Friday.
“Our car is not really feeling strong this weekend,” he said. “Yesterday, we were a second off. I’m hoping it’s not the case tomorrow. But it was a real struggle yesterday.
“We made changes overnight, so I’m hoping we’ll be in a better position. But even with the changes, we’re not on par with McLaren. They’re much faster, and the Red Bulls.”
However he admitted that the rain made it hard to properly assess those changes: “It’s impossible to say today, because we didn’t drive yesterday’s car in the rain, but I’m pretty sure it will be better than what we had yesterday.
“It couldn’t get much worse than that! So it will be better, but how much better? I don’t know.”
Regarding the changes Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin confirmed that there were also mechanical set-up changes as well as the floor.
“We weren’t happy with the balance or pace of the car yesterday, so we made some fairly major changes to the mechanical and aero specification of the car overnight,” he said. We’d hoped for a dry window in FP3 to evaluate those, but unfortunately it stayed wet throughout and there was no chance to accumulate any meaningful running.
“Wet qualifying sessions are difficult at present as the grid is tight. You need to time your new sets to coincide with when the track is at its quickest. By Q3, we were down to one new set of Intermediates. We’d decided to carry more fuel and do multiple laps to try and land one with the driest conditions. That was similar to McLaren. We lost out to the Ferrari of Leclerc though who used his new set right at the end. Had we not been carrying the fuel, we would have had the pace for P2.
“We don’t know where we will stack up on race pace, as the car is quite different to the one we ran in the dry yesterday. Starting from P3 and P6 though, we are hopefully well placed to fight for a podium.”
Adam Cooper F1 