Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin has addressed the impact on car development a year on from the departure of Lewis Hamilton, following a “phenomenal run” with the seven-time world champion.<\/p>\n
Hamilton and Mercedes formed the most successful partnership in the history of F1, securing six drivers\u2019 titles and eight constructors\u2019 championships between 2014 and 2021.<\/p>\n
However, the Briton opted for a switch to Ferrari at the end of 2024, a move that proved highly unsuccessful this year, with Hamilton failing to achieve a single grand prix podium.<\/p>\n
Mercedes\u2019 teenage sensation Kimi Antonelli was promoted to replace the 40-year-old and showed significant promise alongside the experience of George Russell.<\/p>\n
With Hamilton\u2019s exit, Russell assumed the leadership role within the Brackley-based outfit, a position Hamilton had held for the best part of a decade.<\/p>\n
Russell taking on Hamilton\u2019s role allowed Antonelli to adjust to F1 without the pressure of being responsible for car feedback and development, although Shovlin insists his communication about the car was very good.<\/p>\n
Due to Russell\u2019s natural transition into team leader, Hamilton\u2019s departure had little impact when it came to developing the car.<\/p>\n
Addressing the loss of Hamilton from a car development point of view, Shovlin told a select group of media, including RacingNews365: “To be honest, with George it\u2019s fine. I suppose the bigger point is that we don\u2019t really develop the car predominantly based on what the driver is telling us.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Most of it comes from simulations: you\u2019re searching for downforce, you\u2019re searching for certain balance characteristics that you know will deliver lap time, you\u2019re trying to reduce drag, and you\u2019re developing suspension characteristics that can put the car in a better aerodynamic window.<\/p>\n
“So the vast majority of it isn\u2019t the driver saying, \u2018I need this,\u2019 and us rushing off to try and find it. However, it\u2019s very, very helpful to have the consistent element of George in the car.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“He\u2019s known these cars throughout this regulation set, so there was never really any worry about losing our way from a development point of view.<\/p>\n
“And as I said, Kimi is great at telling you what the car is doing, so there was no area there that needed work. It was more that we had a phenomenal run with Lewis, with an awful lot of success, and he decided to try a new challenge at Ferrari.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We were always looking to Kimi as the future, and there was inevitably going to be a learning year. We were fully committed to that, and on balance, I think it\u2019s gone well.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin has addressed the impact on car development a year on from the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":376981,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,806,805,824,803,804,822,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-376980","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-daniel-ricciardo","11":"tag-f1-calendar","12":"tag-f1-live","13":"tag-f1-results","14":"tag-f1-standings","15":"tag-ferrari","16":"tag-formula-1","17":"tag-lewis-hamilton","18":"tag-max-verstappen","19":"tag-motor","20":"tag-motor-sports","21":"tag-motorsport","22":"tag-motosport","23":"tag-motosports","24":"tag-racing","25":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}