The 2023 Formula 1 season started a rocky start for the Mercedes drivers. As the Red Bull team takes every single win over and over, the Mercedes driver has only seemed to struggle. However, Lewis Hamilton found a way to reach the podium a few times. At the same time, George Russell found his way before the Seven-time World Champion a few times.
Recently, Mercedes has seemed to struggle with their car a little, although they keep bringing new updates to the car and do well in the standings and race. As Mercedes tries their best to give competition to Red Bull, they have found ways to end with not-so-great results. Mercedes works to improve their car more the drivers seem to struggle a lot more.
While Red Bull was able to secure all nine wins for the nine races this season. Including, the sprint races that have taken place between the races. Andrew Shovlin recently spoke up about Hamilton’s struggle with the car. He said in an interview saying that Lewis Hamilton will be getting a change in his front wing to be able to handle the car easily. He claimed that Hamilton had been struggling to get used to the car.
Special Mercedes upgrades for Lewis Hamilton
Only Lewis Hamilton has been able to manage to win podiums with George Russell only winning one podium. Even then, Hamilton seems to be having trouble with the car and getting used to driving it. Shovlin said,
“Now with races like the sprint race, you’ve got no time to play with the setup. So there are some items we brought here to try. And adapt the car a bit more towards Lewis’s style, but he’s very pragmatic.”
This statement from Andrew Shovlin had been right after the Sprint race. Lewis Hamilton had finished eighteenth in the sprint race compared to George who had secured the eighth position. Not only that, during the race we had also witnessed Hamilton’s radio where Toto Wolff had been heard saying, “The car is bad I know, please drive it.”
Shovlin further added, “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.”
Although the seven-time World Champion hasn’t confirmed his seat in Mercedes for next year or signed any contracts yet. We can expect to see him for a few more years. As the Silverstone Grand Prix comes along it is only expected that we will see a lot of fan support for the Mercedes drivers.