FORMULA 1 IS BACK!
How do you improve on four titles? hamilton has a plan
8-PAGE LAUNCH SPECIAL
Lewis Hamilton says there are a “number of areas” where he can improve on from last year as he sets his sights on a fifth world title this season with Mercedes.
The British superstar shook down his new Mercedes F1 W09 at Silverstone last week before heading to Barcelona for the start of this week’s first pre-season test as Motorsport News closed for press on Monday.
Mercedes’ new car is largely a development of last year’s W08, which proved dominant in Hamilton’s hands, carrying him to nine grand prix wins and a place in history as the first British driver to win four world titles.
Despite heading into the season as the leading tip for another crown, Hamilton said he felt there was still a lot of work to do to live up to the favourite tag this year.
“I always want to get better and improve as a driver,” said Hamilton. “Last year was perhaps the best year that I have had performance-wise. How can I top that? How can I improve on what was a very, very strong year? But there are lots of areas actually. And even still my relationship with the team is constantly growing. How do I use their genius to help me achieve my goal? And how do I interact with them to help achieve their goal? Ultimately utilising them to get my goal helps them get theirs.
“This is my sixth season with the team, and it’s crazy to think that it’s been that long. This car is a work of art, it’s incredible. I’m in awe of the people in this team and I find myself just staring at the car thinking ‘how do they do that?’”
A fifth world title would put Hamilton level with only Juan Manuel Fangio in second in the all-time winners’ list, behind only Michael Schumacher’s tally of seven.
When asked if he expected repeat run-ins with title rivals this year – such as his spat with Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel at the Azerbaijan GP, Hamilton said: “Hopefully this year, if I am performing at my best, there will be some issues [for his rivals] and they’ll get upset about it. But I don’t play mind games, I just drive faster.”
All-new, but proven
The new Mercedes aims to address the unpredictability of last year’s car, which proved difficult to set up at certain tracks. Mercedes tended to suffer and slower-speed or more technical venues, such as Monaco, Hungary and Sepang in Malaysia.
Hamilton said the new car was more new than many will realise, and that it has been honed by the
driving data of both he and team-mate Valtteri Bottas.
“What you see in this car is an evolution of both our driving DNA fused into one,” said Hamilton.
“I hope that Valtteri is more comfortable in this car, because that can only bode well for the team. But it’s definitely not moved away from me. My job is to explain the weaknesses and put a feeling into technical terms so the team can go and design something to fix it. I’m really hopeful that this year we’ve ironed out most of the creases.
“We had a very in-depth debrief after [Malaysia last year, when Mercedes fell behind both Red Bull and Ferrari]. Those debriefs were significant in making the new car.
“There’s a different aerodynamic characteristic this year compared to last. We’ve taken some of the good from last year, but there were circuits that we went to where we weren’t that strong, so hopefully we’ve found a compromise which will favour the majority of the circuits.
“Some of the suspension, some of the roll issues that we had, some of the ride issues that we had, some of the floor characteristics, those things have improved quite a lot. Everything is brand new, all the suspension, everything’s been redone.”
Design ‘no-brainer’
Despite the troubles at some tracks last year, Mercedes has opted to stick with its longer wheelbase chassis design, something that Ferrari has moved toward with its new challenger.
Mercedes technical director James Allison said sticking with the longer platform was a natural decision.
“The long wheelbase is something we decided very early on was an asset to us, and I’m pretty sure we’re still right on that,” he said.
“It’s much, much easier having a decision like that under your belt, because then you’re not running two windtunnel programmes with two wheelbases, two models, two different things. You can be pretty certain the gains you got last year will be inherited by the car for this year. If you’re sure the longer wheelbase is an asset, then it’s a no-brainer to carry it over.
“The rake of the car is something you work on all the time. We try to make the mechanical grip part of our suspension work nicely with the aerodynamic package, and where we have a broad peak of our best rear downforce performance is a little lower in ride height than some other cars. The peak rear downforce moves up a little bit for this year’s car, but we certainly won’t be in the sort of rake territory that we saw the Red Bulls in last year.”