Hamilton's Japanese GP hopes hindered by Leclerc clash damage

Lewis Hamilton says a Turn 1 contact with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and subsequent “massive understeer” crushed his hopes of achieving a strong result in the Japanese GP.

The Mercedes driver lined up on Sunday’s grid at Suzuka in seventh place but felt optimistic about his prospects in the race after Friday’s practice had suggested that a new set-up direction followed by the Brackley squad might unlock the W15’s potential.

However, those hopes were quickly squashed after the race’s restart following a red flag on the opening lap. Amid the commotion at the first corner, a minor contact between Hamilton and Leclerc left the Briton’s car with unseen damage.

Unfortunately, the immediate effect of the clash was severe understeer, which significantly hindered Hamilton’s pace and consistency.

The seven-time world champion’s troubles allowed George Russell to bridge the gap with the number 44 Mercedes, which in turn encouraged Hamilton to let his teammate by.

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“I mean, the car is never what I would [have] hoped it would be. It's never what we'd hoped it would be,” Hamilton explained.

“I got some damage in the first stint in the restart with Charles, and I had massive understeer, like huge, huge understeer. So that's why I decided to let George by, because he seemed quicker.

“I just couldn't turn the car, and it took us two stints to finally dial more and more wing in to make up for that loss. Last stint I was better, but it was too late. I had 10 seconds to regain.”

Hamilton's outlook at the conclusion of Sunday’s race didn’t reflect the positive atmosphere that had prevailed the previous day.

“I don't know if you can take many positives from the weekend,” he said. “I mean the car has finished which is good. But we're like you know 7th, 8th, 9th fastest…”

Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin reckoned that the team’s relatively subdued performance in qualifying had set it up for a difficult Sunday.

“We weren't quick enough in qualifying so were starting too far back to challenge for the podium,” said Show. “Early in the race, our pace was simply not good enough too.

“We'd decided to go to the hard tyre at the red flag as we felt there wasn't much threat from behind, and it was our best way to offset and try something different.

“Towards the end of that stint we were really struggling with low grip. We couldn't stop early as there was too much traffic in the window, so we stayed out until we had cleared it.

“Unfortunately by then, we had lost a chunk of time. The second and third stints were more encouraging, but we'd lost too much time by that point to get back into the mix.

"We know that we are not quick enough at the moment, so we will continue [to] work hard to improve that. Despite the challenging result, it has been a useful weekend to learn more about our car and develop our understanding of the W15.”

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