Despite Bringing In Eye-Catching Updates in Monaco, Lewis Hamilton Fails to Trust W14 as Major Problem Continues to Persist

No one would dream of running their upgrades to a slow and dangerous track like Monaco. But of course, with Imola canceled, Mercedes had to bring their much-anticipated upgrades to the Monaco Grand Prix. Although it’s no place to test the upgrades, both the drivers affirmed to having a “good feeling” in the upgraded Mercedes W14. Especially Lewis Hamilton as the ‘zero sidepod’ design that made the Brit uncomfortable in the car was completely abandoned. However, going by their performance, it looks like they haven’t made much progress. 

Going into the Grand Prix, the Brackley-based team didn’t have high expectations. However, Hamilton got off to a strong start and produced astonishing results in the first practice. The Briton traded the fastest times early on in FP1 to end up third fastest. However, the happiness was only short-lived as it was followed by a crash in FP3, resulting in a P6 in the qualifying. So, although Hamilton could feel improvements in the car, he conceded that it still lacks performance, and can not trust it yet.   

However, post-qualifying the British driver confessed to ‘overdriving’ before the crash and how the W14 was incapable of withstanding it. But Mercedes’s trackside engineering director explained how the drivers can build more trust despite negative results. Speaking in the F1 Nation podcast after the Monaco GP, Andrew Shovlin said, “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.”

“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.”

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Last year, Lewis Hamilton qualified sixth and was six-tenths off pole position. This year, he qualified in the same place, but he was only three-tenths off the pole. So, that’s progress. However, the question is: is that enough?

Lewis Hamilton says upgraded Mercedes had improved, but it’s still ‘tricky’ 

Hamilton came home in fourth place in Monte Carlo, having started the race from fifth on the grid. Also, he missed his second podium of the season by just over two seconds behind third-place finisher Esteban Ocon. That way, Mercedes has taken a step forward, but it’s not enough. Because the Mercedes driver benefitted from a strategy call from Ferrari to bring Carlos Sainz into the pits to ditch his hard tires on Lap 33–the earlier of the hard tire starters to make their stop. This handed track position to Mercedes, with Hamilton moving back ahead of George Russell when the young British driver made an error at Mirabeau.

With Mercedes coming home in fourth and fifth place, Hamilton was beaming as he spoke to the media afterward and said, “I’m really happy. We moved forwards and, coming into the weekend, I didn’t know where we would stand. So to come out fourth and fifth, it was really great points for the team. It’s a huge thank you to everyone back at the factory for pushing and bringing those upgrades. There’s so much work to bring those here and we kept in one piece and we brought it home. We beat the Ferraris, we really got some good points today as a team.”

However, the 33-year-old believes the Circuit de Catalunya will allow for a better understanding of the new components, and said: “Next week, Barcelona is the best test bench circuit for us. It was really difficult here to really know,” he said, before explaining he could feel a clear difference compared to the old-spec even at Monte Carlo. “The car feels very stiff, there’s a lot of bumps–it’s tricky.”

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Because of their misfortune since 2022, the once-dominant team Mercedes now sits third in the constructors’ championship, behind customer team Aston Martin.