Lewis Hamilton: Is this the REAL reason Mercedes are struggling in 2018?
MERCEDES claim Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas are struggling with the 2018 version of F1’s Pirelli tyres - but that they are not the only team with the problem.
Hamilton admitted his last outing at the Chinese Grand Prix was a “disaster” after ended up fifth across the line.
Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo produced a sensational drive to win the race, ending Sebastian Vettel’s 100 per cent record in 2018 and ensuring that Mercedes have failed to win three times in row - the first time that has happened in the hybrid era.
And now chief strategist James Vowles has opened up on the problems, claiming that getting the new tyres into the right temperature “window” has got harder.
“I think the tyres this year are having an impact," Vowles said.
"But more so than that there’s a second aspect as well, which is you’ve got three teams – Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull – that all, depending on what tyre it is, and what track it is, are able to have different levels of performance to each other.
"And what that’s creating is different cars with different levels of performance depending on what the track temperature is, what the conditions are, and what tyre they have fitted to the car.
"What you’re seeing is a shift in environmental factors for a track.
“As you go to a track and it becomes windy or not windy, or cold or hot, you can see a swing of up to a second in lap times because of those environmental factors."
Hamilton claimed he had “no pace” at the Chinese Grand Prix while a five-place grid penalty in Bahrain the week before put paid to his chances of a race win.
And at the Australian Grand Prix, the defending champion’s opening race was compromised by a software glitch that allowed Vettel to steal the victory.
Lewis Hamilton's triple overtake at the Bahrain GP
“In Melbourne we were able to get the car working on the tyres," Vowles added.
"In Q3 we set a time that was extremely fast with Lewis.
"If we go forward to Bahrain, the medium tyre worked very well on our car, and the degradation on the supersoft looked good, as well.
"So there are little vignettes of information where we’ve been able to get it to work.
"Again, in the Chinese GP in Q2 we did a [1m]31.9s with Lewis, and that would have put us in contention for fifth place on the grid, on a soft tyre. So you get this evidence of the tyres working.
“Conversely [it was] the same for Ferrari. In Melbourne they weren’t quite there.
“On the supersoft in Bahrain they were just outside the range, and degrading too much, and on the medium, a little bit slower than us.
"So it’s a window that all teams have to try and operate with."