Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin has admitted that the team’s new front wing for this weekend’s British Grand Prix has been introduced to help Lewis Hamilton, who’s been unhappy with the W14’s behaviour.
The Silver Arrows have fitted a new front wing to Hamilton and George Russell’s cars, with Shovlin admitting that it’s been designed “more towards Lewis’ style”.
Interestingly, Mercedes have done this despite Russell currently being the lower of the two drivers.
Whilst Russell finished ahead of Hamilton last weekend at the Austrian Grand Prix, the former Williams driver has appeared to be less comfortable with the W14’s new concept.
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Russell currently finds himself three places and 34 points behind his seven-time World Champion team-mate, yet the 25-year-old insists that Hamilton “is still struggling a lot with the car” too, despite performing better since the new concept was introduced.
One of Hamilton’s biggest complaints with the W14 is that his driving position is too far forward, something which has made him unhappy with the behaviour of the car.
The new front wing is supposedly meant to make Hamilton more comfortable with the car, something which’ll help him continue to “develop” the W14.
Shovlin revealed that the 103-time race winner is “pretty calm” with supporting the team’s development of the car, an area he’s “very focused on”.
“When we made changes to the car in Monaco, it got a bit pointy and the front end is quite direct. And it’s a fine line between that being helpful to your driving style and it being a bit of a hindrance,” Shovlin told Sky Sports F1 after Free Practice 1.
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“Now with races like the sprint race, you’ve got no time to play with setup so there’s some items we brought here to try and adapt the car a bit more towards Lewis’s style, but he’s very pragmatic.
“He’s taking a long-term view on this and he’s very focused on what is it I need to look at to test to try and find the improvements.
“We’ll chip away at that here but he’s pretty calm in terms of helping us develop the car the way that we need to, and in the background working on his own understanding of how to adapt the setup to his style.”