Mercedes Accepts George Russell ‘bumping into’ Lewis Hamilton in Belgium was because of their own mistake

The Belgian Grand Prix weekend was far from good for the Mercedes team. Lewis Hamilton was left frustrated with his team and teammate as George Russell bumped into him during the Sprint Shootout. Russell took the blame when the session ended, but his team has since come forth and taken the onus on themselves.

During the sprint session, George Russell was in search of a flying lap, but the weather played spoilsport for him. Russell was just ahead of his teammate as he locked up on turn one of the circuit. This meant Hamilton’s nose was on the tail of Russell’s car, which resulted in Hamilton having to apply the brakes. As a result, Hamilton and Russell finished in 7th and 10th places, respectively.

As the session came to a close, Russell claimed it was a “s**t show” from his end from start to finish. But Mercedes has since come forth and claimed it was their miscalculation and miscommunication that led to the incident.

Mercedes team takes blame for the clash between Lewis Hamilton and George Russell

While both drivers were left frustrated with how everything unfolded at the Belgian sprint session, Mercedes seems to have understood what went wrong that day. Because of the wet track, the team was waiting for it to dry out, which meant the final few laps would be faster than the previous ones. Hence, they decided to put both their drivers in full attack mode, which led to miscommunication out on the track. Mercedes led their drivers to believe they had less time available than they actually had, ending up with their cars too close for comfort.

“When you have a track that is drying up, it almost always happens that the fastest lap is going to be the last lap, so your first few laps are about getting a lap on the bank, and then when you get to the end of the session, you want to be in the right place. We went towards that, but what we could see in the last few corners is that there were a lot of queues, and a lot of cars there, so we were worried about crossing the line before the end of the session. And we were asking our drivers to speed up, they thought they had less time available than they really did, and as a result, we ended up with our two cars too close together.”

But that was not all that went wrong for Mercedes in Spa-Francorchamps. The infamous porpoising phenomenon, which haunted them throughout the ’22 season, made a comeback as Hamilton struggled to find grip during the race.

Porpoising came back to haunt Hamilton and Mercedes

Having started in the front row, the seven-time world champion held on to the third place before Max Verstappen overtook him. Hamilton knew his car would not be able to keep up with those in front of him, but that was not his biggest concern.

 

Lewis Hamilton has said his Mercedes struggled with porpoising again at the #BelgianGP, just like it did during 2022.#F1 #seanknows pic.twitter.com/wOZMLUIYSQ

— Sean Cardovillis (@seancardo) July 30, 2023

As the race progressed, Lewis Hamilton faced a lot of bouncing during even the easiest of straights in Belgium. As the race ended, Hamilton said the rear end of the car was their biggest issue and they also faced a lot of bouncing, much like last year. This feedback left Mercedes scratching their head yet again, as it took them a full year to solve the issue, but to no avail.

Mercedes introduced new upgrades to their car’s body during the Belgian GP weekend. But the lack of quality free practice sessions led to them not foreseeing potential porpoising of the car during the main race. Mercedes can tackle this problem by running their car slightly higher off the ground. However, this will result in slower top speeds of the car.