Mercedes ‘pushed too far’ in Hamilton Jeddah setup

Andrew Shovlin admitted Mercedes went too far in trying to find a better setup for Lewis Hamilton in Jeddah, which ultimately backfired.

The Mercedes trackside engineering director said the team thought they had found a different route for the seven-time World Champion heading into Saturday’s running, but admitted the team don’t quite fully understand the W13 just yet, which caused Hamilton to have a lack of rear grip while out on track.

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The perils around the Jeddah Corniche Circuit are well-known, as evidenced by Mick Schumacher’s horror crash in qualifying, and Shovlin believes that the setup with which Hamilton entered parc fermé conditions prevented him from fully attacking the track, which in turn partly caused his shock Q1 exit.

#OnThisDay in 2014:

Lewis Hamilton won in the V6 turbo-hybrid era for the first time, taking victory at the Malaysian Grand Prix.#F1 pic.twitter.com/ZoVO5lfYMV

— PlanetF1 (@Planet_F1) March 30, 2022

“Well, there’s a few reasons but fundamentally, we don’t really understand the car yet as well as we do it at the end of the year, we’ve only had two races with it,” Shovlin explained in the team’s post-race debrief video.

“So, we are always exploring the