Mercedes Engineer Subtly Pins Blame on Sprint Format at COTA for Unfortunate Lewis Hamilton Podium Strip

Tanish Chachra | 23/10/2023
Mercedes Engineer Subtly Pins Blame on Sprint Format at COTA for Unfortunate Lewis Hamilton Podium Strip

The United States Grand Prix was a glorious procession for Mercedes until they were scrutinized by the FIA. Lewis Hamilton’s P2 was stripped a few hours after the podium as he was disqualified after skids in his car were not found in compliance with the rules. However, Mercedes engineer Andrew Shovlin, while speaking to F1 media, pins the blame on the surface of the Circuit of the Americas added to Sprint race’s exploits on the car.

Lewis Hamilton was not the only one to face the disqualification; Ferrari star Charles Leclerc was also committed from the final results.

From being almost on the route to win the race for the first time in two years, Hamilton has ended up with zero points. But does the fault lie with Mercedes? For Shovlin, not entirely.

Tough constraints stripped Mercedes of the podium

Shovlin was asked about the update on the race result. After a tiring sprint race weekend, the Mercedes engineer ended up finding the constraints of the format to be a big factor in their disqualification.

“We are of course naturally very disappointed to lose our podium finish. Unfortunately, it is one of the pitfalls of the sprint format where we have a solitary hour of running before parc fermé. Without running at a race fuel load in FP1, combined with a circuit,” said Shovlin.

Shovlin also claimed that the bumpy track also gave higher wear than expected. In the end, he promised to learn from this process, and the team will do better next time. While Mercedes had to tolerate a big point haul loss, there were some positives in Austin.

Lewis Hamilton can aim back at the prize

By the last seven laps of the race, when Lewis Hamilton overtook Lando Norris, he was more than five seconds behind the race leader, Max Verstappen. However, by the end of the race, the gap was even less than 2 seconds. Thus, a gigantic three-second gap was covered in such a small time frame.

Hamilton, after the race himself, said that had there been a few more laps, he could have won. Therefore, telling the step up made by Mercedes is promising.

Now, the last few races would be a testament to whether the last big development by Mercedes puts them in the mix against Red Bull for 2024 or not. Surely, a win in the remainder of the season would be a big boost.

Post Edited By: Somin Bhattacharjee
Lewis Hamilton Mercedes

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

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