“This decision impacted his start”– Andrew Shovlin blames last-minute improvisation by his team for the poor start by Lewis Hamilton in Monza.
Lewis Hamilton was already at a deficit at the start of the race against Max Verstappen as he was on P4, while the latter was on the pole. But an underwhelming start to his race made him soon lose out on the race podium, and eventually, his race came to an end with a DNF after a crash with Max Verstappen.
Andrew Shovlin has said that Hamilton’s start could have been better if the team had gone according to the plan and stuck to the soft compound tyres instead of improvising in the end.
”Some of that was because instead of starting on the soft tires, which we had expected and what Lewis was prepared for, we decided to start on the medium tires. And that was because we saw that soft had more degradation than expected,” said Shovlin.
“Now that medium had a bit less grip. So when he requested the torque for the start, the wheel started to break away. And unfortunately, when you get the wheel spin, the grip of the tire actually drops even further and so you get into a vicious circle.”
“So, unfortunately, after a solid job in the qualifying, he lost a couple of positions off the line.” explained Shovlin.
We need to bounce back.
Shovlin now asserts that his team needs to bounce back into the championship with the next race in Russia after a preposterous result in Italy.
“We just need to make sure we put a good weekend together in Russia. It’s a place where the car should be competitive,” said Shovlin. “We’ve had pretty messy races for quite a long time now,” he added.
“And really, the team needs to not get distracted and just focus on delivering the kind of performance that we know we can, and the performance we need to win these championships.” said the Mercedes trackside engineer.
