Mercedes seeks to address early race weekend glitches

Even though Lewis Hamilton scored a dominant victory for the team in Sunday's Hungarian Grand Prix, Mercedes have still been left with a 'to do' list of issues to look into before the next round at Silverstone.

In the lead-up to the start in Hungary, the team was aware of a sensor issue on Hamilton's car but were unable to speak to the driver. And seconds later, Valtteri Bottas came perilously close to a jump start after reacting to an errant signal on his dashboard.

Mercedes trackside engineer Andrew Shovelin said in a debriefing video posted on YouTube by the team that in the Finn'a case, the car had been left in the wrong mode at the start.

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“His issue was actually that he reacted to one of the lights on his dash that flickered,” Shovlin explained. "That's because he practices his starts using his steering wheel over the weekends.

"To simulate the lights going out at the start, his lights also turn off on his steering wheel. So when the lights on his dashboard go out he started during the simulations," he continued.

"That's why he reacted at the real start - it distracted him," Shovelin added. “Luckily, he was able to pull the clutch and avoid a jumped start.

"There's an automatic system that can measure when a car has gone off the grid spot," Shovelin explained. "The car can be in a reasonably large area inside that grid box without the system noticing.

"Valtteri hadn't moved far he was still within range, so the system didn't detect a false start because he was still within his box when the lights went out.

"It did cause him to lose a lot of space, because resetting and getting ready to go meant everyone else was off and around him by the time he was getting up to speed."

Hamilton meanwhile got a textbook start and went on to lead for all but one lap of the race. But he too had been distracted by an issue as he arrived to take up pole position when he radioed the Mercedes pit wall to tell them that “the engine keeps sounding like it’s going to stall.”

The team knew that it was just a sensor glitch and nothing to worry about, but they couldn't tell Hamilton, as that sort of communication during the start procedure would have amounted to illegal 'driver aid' - the same rule that befell the Haas squad then they told their drivers to pit at the end of the formation lap.

Mercedes were aware of the the same risk, which is why they had to keep quiet and hope it didn't affect Hamilton's performance on the opening lap.

“Lewis reported a problem on the formation lap where he said he thought the engine was going to stall,” Shovlin recalled. “What it actually was was a sensor issue that was only affecting the engine around the idle control when he was sat there, waiting to go off on the formation lap.

"It wasn't a problem, it wasn't going to stall and there is a protection that will actually stop the engine from stalling anyway if you were in that situation," Shovelin insisted. "But we couldn't tell him it was okay, and that's because of the rules that prevent you talking to the driver during that entire formation lap.

"We knew it was fine, but he had to sort of worry a bit until he got off the line," he added.

While Hamilton's race was unaffected by the early glitch, Bottas' early miscue ultimately cost him second place to Max Verstappen and the lead in the drivers championship to his team mate. Bottas was also ruing having missed out on a chance to beat Hamilton to pole position in Saturday's qualifying session.

"I got too much fuel for the qualification for some reason," he told RaceFans.net, adding that this had inevitably affected what happened on race day.

Bottas missed out on pole by a tenth of a second - exactly what he believes the excess fuel had cost him. “It of course depends, it could be more or less than a tenth," he said.

And the previous week in Austria, Bottas had also been affected by a different set-up issue on the W11. "There was a slip-up in my car,” he revealed. “It wasn’t at the right ride height, it was adjusted too high and it probably affected a lot - especially when it rained.

"It was a human error, somebody made a mistake on something that's all," he stated. “Of course it’s a pity. This year every small detail counts.”

Taken together, it shows that Mercedes' strong start to the season has not been without its problems, which the team is now determined to get on top of. “There has been a bit too much mess-ups, but we learn from those,” Bottas acknowledged.

A Mercedes spokesperson confirmed that both drivers had suffered minor problems with their cars over the opening race weekends. However they insisted that these had not had any bearing on the results of either qualifying or the race.

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