Hamilton lost two tenths due to the collision with Ocon

Lewis Hamilton’s race was not the one desired by the seven-time world champion. Following a tumultuous start due to heavy rain and a drying track, while attempting to overtake Esteban Ocon, the British driver damaged his front wing after two contacts. However, thanks to a red flag caused by Mick Schumacher’s dramatic accident, Hamilton was able to change his wing for free in the pits before the race was restarted.

After the race, Mercedes was able to analyze the pace of the car and found an abnormal loss of pace: « It wasn’t huge in terms of numbers, but looking at the data we had with the car, it was around one to two tenths of a second per lap. So, it wasn’t massive, and conveniently, the red flag allowed us to fix the accidental damage, so we were able to change the front wing without actually receiving a penalty. » explains Andrew Shovlin, Director of Performance at Mercedes, in a debriefing video posted online by the team.

The good side of things is that it’s the only damage we had during the Monaco weekend. So, both drivers did a really good job to bring the cars back home more or less intact. After the red flag, even though he was blocked by the car of his former Spanish rival Fernando Alonso, the German team still declares that Hamilton was on the same pace as his teammate Russell.

The frustration in Lewis’ race in Monaco came from the fact that he was constantly in traffic. He didn’t have many laps where he could show what he could really do, but the car was working reasonably well. We didn’t have the pace to compete with Ferrari and Red Bull there, but he would certainly have been in the battle with Lando [Norris] and George [Russell]. Andrew Shovlin explains.

Currently 6th in the drivers’ championship, this is the worst start to the season for the British driver since the beginning of his career. But the German team has no doubt about the pace of their star driver.