In a look back at the race weekend in Miami, Andrew Shovlin of the Mercedes F1 team explains that Lewis Hamilton’s disappointing performance during qualifying for the Miami GP was caused by a gust of wind.
It was striking that Lewis Hamilton drove the second fastest time during Q2, but ultimately had to be satisfied with the ninth fastest time in Q3, which in itself was disappointing. Andrew Shovlin, head of trackside engineering at Mercedes, explains that the sensitivity of the tyres in combination with an ‘unfortunate gust of wind’ was the cause of the disappointing performance in Q3.
“We were quite happy with the lap time we did in Q2 and we were hoping to repeat that in Q3,” Shovlin said in a Mercedes video. “It wasn’t really a problem with the grip initially and the start of the lap was quite good. He was a bit unhappy when he came into turn 11 that he got a gust of wind from behind.”
“This ensures that your car has significantly less downforce. He entered the corner with a lot of oversteer. That causes the tyres to overheat.”
“Once you get that temperature in the tyres in that narrow and twisty part of the circuit there is no way to cool them down and that causes a loss of grip. If that gust of wind had not been there, that lap would certainly have been much better.”