F1: Mercedes engineer says Hamilton was at fault
Mercedes rolled out their much-awaited W14 upgrades for the famous Monaco Grand Prix but that did not stop Lewis Hamilton from stuffing it in the barriers anyway.
Hamilton was third fastest in FP1 and showing great promise with the upgrades.
His momentum was cut short due to a crash in FP3, later ending up P6 in the qualifying. Hamilton said he couldn’t fully trust its performance yet as he slid into the barriers.
Shovlin, talking to the F1 Nation podcast, rejected his reaction, putting the blame on Hamilton for not warming his tires properly:
“Well, you don’t get temperature by overdriving and sliding – you get the temperature, but the wrong temperature.
“You don’t want it on the surface because we know that the Italian product is quite temperamental on surface temperature, so, you need to build the core temperature, very specifically,”he said referencing the Pirellis.
“That’s art and science no one has fully mastered, but this sliding itself is not good.
“Overdriving is not really the way forward, but if they said that they are doing that, it’s perhaps now old-school singing quite a good sign because they feel comfortable and able to do it.
“So that means that the way the car goes in is progressive, it is user friendly and then perhaps on that, they could build up more performance and more trust in the car.”