Kerbs: The culprit behind Hamilton's damaged car floor
- Farhan Khurram
- Mar 21, 2019
- 2 min read
Mercedes now believes that the damage sustained by Hamilton's W10 car floor, was caused by the kerbs.
Lewis Hamilton finished a distant 2nd in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, as his Finnish teammate, Valtteri Bottas dominantly cruised to victory, by a margin of 21 seconds.
“On inspection of Lewis’ car after the race, we noticed some damage on what we call the tyre seal area,” said James Vowles, Mercedes' Chief Strategist.
“We saw the broken carbon just in front of that rear tyre on that floor region.
"That area is quite sensitive aerodynamically, both for downforce and also for balance of the car, and we believe we sustained it during the race while riding over some kerbs.
“Lewis already had a very long stint on that Medium tyre after covering off the threat from [Sebastian] Vettel’s undercut,
"So he was already having to manage those tyres quite significantly, hindering his progress through the race.
“Furthermore, that floor damage wouldn’t have helped.
"It would have caused the rear to be more unstable that it normally would be, and he did a fantastic job bringing that car to the end of the race.” commented Vowles.
The lack of performance and such a widened gap to his teammate was reported to have been caused a chunk of floor missing at rear end of Lewis' car. Hamilton had also been complaining throughout the race that his rear end felt unbalanced, a major factor contributing to his struggle while fending off an ever attacking Max Verstappen.
Vowles also elaborated on the reason of pitting Hamilton earlier, which was to basically prevent Vettel leaping ahead of him later in the race.
"In free-air, Vettel was very, very fast"
He further added to his comments saying, "They successfully covered any undercut risk from Verstappen but were also starting to come into Lewis' window very, very quickly."
"Indeed, his outlap was already quite a bit faster than Lewis already and that Medium compound had a warm-up slope.
What that means is it's quite difficult for the first few sequences of corners, but into the second lap of driving on it, it becomes faster and faster.
"So there was a severe and genuine risk that Vettel would be in Lewis' window."
"We opted to make sure we covered that off by stopping Lewis and giving him enough time on track to deal with the warm-up,
"And understand what he could do in terms of management to absorb that gap to Vettel."
To watch the complete debrief by James Vowles. Click here
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