It’s a bit of a red herring to say that Lewis Hamilton gained his performance because of plank wear. I think the Mercedes we saw in Austin is definitely a step forward for him.
The big thing for me is it looks like the changes to the underfloor may have been detrimental to George Russell while benefiting Lewis. That’s something they need to look at again because it’s obviously something we’ve seen this year at Red Bull, between Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez.
If you build a car to suit one driver, that’s what you get.
I wouldn’t say that the fact that this wear on the plank itself made much difference in performance for Mercedes. The big thing is these ground effect cars benefit from being close to the ground. But you can only run them so close to the ground because hitting it is detrimental to its performance.
The plank underneath the car, which is made of a very high density wood-based material, has got lots of metallic skid plates fitted in various defined positions. They are titanium because the FIA decided a few years ago they want to see sparks, especially for the night races. So there’s a high density wooden plank, with titanium skids inserted over certain areas - that’s the sparks you see. But with a car running too low, if it hits the ground in the middle of a fast corner, it’s history - you’re going off track.
In terms of its significance on Sunday, the plank wear is such that it will be worse at the beginning of the race, when the car is heavier on fuel, than it will be at the end of the race.
We saw the Mercedes probably at its best during that final stint - at that point in time, it wasn’t suffering plank wear, it wasn’t hitting the road too hard. The plate wear would all have happened fairly early on in the race.
The visual changes that we saw on the car have very little to do with the overall gain in performance. It’s underneath the car that really makes it all work together. The visual changes we see are to accommodate the changes that give you the performance. What they’ve done is to work the front corner of the floor significantly harder. And that means that the airflow to the diffuser which creates the downforce underneath the car is better defined and, more importantly, consistent - which is what Lewis was really saying when he talked about his overall progress in Austin.
A driver with confidence can deliver more than a good car
With any driver, confidence is everything. If you can give them confidence even with a lesser downforce car, they will be able to drive it faster than a higher downforce car that doesn’t give them confidence. These cars are so fast and you’re entering corners at such high speeds, you need to know that the feeling you’re getting from the car is going to be consistent through that corner.
It’s no good having a feeling that you can turn in fine, but then suddenly the rear of the car steps out on you. That just reduces your confidence. If there’s a level that you can drive a certain car at, having reduced confidence because of the car being nasty, will lose you 10 per cent. But having a car that gives you a good feeling of confidence, you’ll gain on overall performance by two per cent.
The driver will always be more able to use his talents in a car that gives him confidence to get that bit more out of it. In a car that gives you belief, the driver will use his talents to dig that bit deeper.
That’s absolutely what we see with Lewis. He has spent a lot of years driving a very good car and won race championships with it. When the car is confidence-inspiring, he has the talent to find that bit more.
But when the car isn’t confidence inspiring, he doesn’t get as near to the edge as maybe some of the other younger drivers would do. He wants to pursue what he knows is possible. That’s why you see Russell on occasions giving Lewis a hard time, mainly because at that track the car is not confidence-inspiring.
Russell’s happy to live with that and to try to get the best out of that because of his experience with Williams through the bad years. But Lewis knows that underneath there, you need a good car to actually get success.
Signs are good for 2024 improvement
As Mercedes have said themselves, this is a learning curve step for next year. My big argument all the time is that, more than anything else, you have to prove to yourself that you know the direction you’re taking is the correct one. It’s important to make these changes even though they’re not as big a step that you probably could do with a whole new car.
We’ve had high spots and low spots in the Mercedes in the past this season. So I think we need to just give it another race or two before we get too excited about life. But from what I’ve seen so far in Austin with these changes, it looks like a step in the direction you need to go. Let’s just hang on a minute or two to see how consistent that step is.
Nevertheless, it’s a step in the direction that gives you the confidence to make those decisions for the future which, as a team, you need to have over the long winter ahead.
It’s not just about showing the public that you can go faster. It’s about showing yourself that you can go faster. That’s the important thing.
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