Reviewing the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Mercedes head of race strategy Rosie Wait has explained two areas of concern affecting Lewis Hamilton as the threat of a DNF loomed
Mercedes will address brake reliability concerns on their 2024 car after Lewis Hamilton ran the risk of failing to finish the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
It was not a particularly triumphant end to the season for the seven-time world champion. Ninth place marked his worst result of the year, other than his DNF in Qatar and disqualification two weeks after that at the United States Grand Prix.
But those two points were earned by gritting his teeth through two threats that threatened to make his evening even worse. Mercedes head of race strategy Rosie Wait confirmed as much in a debrief video released by the team.
The first threat was his damaged front wing, with the left endplate flapping in the wind after contact with Pierre Gasly. Mercedes opted against changing it but, as Wait admits, they would have been forced to if it became a potential danger.
“These things often look worse on television than they are in reality and in the data and, undoubtedly, it will have affected the balance and the performance of Lewis’ car slightly,” she said. “But it was never a consideration for us to pay the cost of a pit stop of fitting a new front wing versus just continuing with it.
“Actually, the biggest concern for us was structural, so, if it had degraded and started to become a structural concern then that might have been a safety issue and that might have forced us to change it. We were monitoring it very closely during the race but thankfully that never became an issue and he could just complete the race with the wing as it was.”
A change of front wing in the pit lane would have cost Hamilton several vital seconds and may have led to him finishing even lower than ninth. But more threatening was the prospect of not completing the race at all thanks to problems with his brakes – which Wait said was a real worry in the late stages.
Explaining the 38-year-old’s apparently slower pace in the third stint, she said: “Well, actually if you picked through the data and correct for things like the age of tyres, the track condition, Lewis’ performance was actually pretty similar through stint two and stint three – but the race situation made it look quite different.
“In stint two Lewis was on fresh tyres chasing down Fernando [Alonso] whereas Fernando was on older tyres and spent most of that stint in the dirty air of [Oscar] Piastri. That makes Fernando’s performance look worse than it is in reality and Lewis therefore look stronger.
“Take stretch three and the positions were switched. Fernando had marginally more current tires than Lewis and outside air and Lewis was in the messy quality of Fernando with the more seasoned tires as that is the reason his exhibition doesn’t look as noteworthy notwithstanding the lap times being very comparable.
“The other thing to know about is that Lewis was overseeing brake issues all through the race, which was a genuine dependability concern. In this way, our main need was ensuring that we got that vehicle to the completion and didn’t need to resign it. That will have impacted his exhibition to differing degrees all through the race and is something that we are surely dealing with to improve for the following year’s vehicle.”