Lewis Hamilton data reveals strong trend behind qualifying errors

Las Vegas GP

In the last race we witnessed total Mercedes dominance in both qualifying and race pace, Hamilton was unable to get past P10 in Q3 while his teammate managed a fantastic pole.

The reason was this clear lack of execution. Despite having the pace and confidence in the car that he has often lacked this year, even with that he was unable to put two full laps together on two separate attempts in Q3.

On the first attempt, he suffered a big lock up which caused him to abort the lap and on the second attempt he suffered a wild slide in T3 which cost him valuable tenths. He admitted later he should have been on pole or at least P2.

Bahrain GP

Back to the first race of the year. Here, the W15 shows a strong qualifying pace with Russell’s P3. Meanwhile, Hamilton could only manage P9 with a handling error in the fast hairpin – turns 6 and 7 of the Sakhir circuit – and losing another extra tenth while attacking the final corner.

Canadian GP

Another circuit where the W15 was tremendously competitive at low temperatures and again Hamilton was unable to execute a good lap in Q3. He didn’t need a perfect lap either, but it was in keeping with the car’s performance.

Russell took pole and Hamilton could only manage P7 after losing almost three tenths of a second with a mistake in the final metres.

Austrian GP

This qualifying was much closer between Russell and Hamilton. However, a mistake at turn 3 made him go wide and lose any kind of chance to overtake his teammate.

A few metres later in turn 4 he again lost traction at the exit of the corner and finally we can see how he tried to be very aggressive in the last corner of the Red Bull Ring to make up for lost time but to no avail. Russell was P3 and he was P5.

Australian GP

It was the first time this season that Hamilton didn’t make it to Q3. The British driver lost everything in the last two corners of the Albert Park Street Circuit when he was matching Russell in the first two sectors of his last Q2 attempt.

Chinese GP

The first of Lewis’ three big shocks in Q1 this season. Lewis himself admitted his mistake as he finished P18 while Russell made it through to Q3 and eventually finished P8. Under hard braking on the back straight of the Shanghai circuit, Hamilton lost the apex and went wide on the exit of the corner, losing a lot of time.

Italian GP

Again he suffered, especially in this case, on corner entry. Just in the hard braking of the first chicane of Monza, Hamilton already lost more than a tenth of a second.

After a great second sector where he managed to stay ahead of Russell, he had a small mistake at Ascari that made him lose traction and finally, a very bad entry to the Parabolica corner.

USA GP

For his shocking elimination in Q1 in this Grand Prix, we already dedicated a specific article comparing his performance with Russell. The car was very nervous at the rear end, but Hamilton couldn’t handle it in the best possible way either, losing all his options in the braking at turn 12.

Azerbaijan GP

Not everything was Hamilton’s fault. As we can see for example in Azerbaijan, the difference in philosophy of his car’s set-up compared to Russell’s was clearly to his disadvantage.

With a lower downforce set-up, Hamilton suffered badly in the Sector 2 twisty corners while the differences in the faster sectors were not enough to compensate for the cornering speed losses.

In Azerbaijan, as well as in other races like Brazil or Zandvoort, the car was all over the place. Although Hamilton was not able to get the maximum out of it, not all the blame can be put on him here.

Although his team-mate was able to achieve P2 under the heavy rain at Interlagos and P4 in the Netherlands, while he could only manage P16 and P12, respectively.

What Lewis Hamilton’s data shows us

Looking at this telemetry data, it is surprising that many of these mistakes occur repeatedly in the final corners of the different circuits with all their very specific characteristics.

This can be explained by the fact that perhaps in the final metres of the qualifying attempts, the W15 overheats the tyres too much. This would explain why, for example, the car works better in mixed conditions in Silverstone and Brazil and at low temperatures like what happened in Canada and Las Vegas.

This year’s Mercedes car stands out for having a very sharp front end but very limited rear grip, which together with increased overheating on the tyres makes handling more difficult.

As we discussed in the numerical analysis of the head to head between Hamilton and all his former qualifying partners, Lewis prefers a car that is able to attack the corner entry very hard, but is more subtle on corner exit without putting so much demand on the rear tyres.

The W15 has a different behavioural philosophy to Hamilton’s preferences. That doesn’t completely justify the big difference to Russell this season, but it does explain most of the story.