Mercedes F1 Director Has Bad News for Lewis Hamilton in Big Blow to Turkish GP Hopes

Lewis Hamilton will start outside the top-10 in the Turkish Grand Prix despite his qualifying result. The Mercedes driver has taken an Internal Combustion Engine upgrade, which has got him a 10-place grid penalty. But Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin believes that despite Lewis’s pace advantage, overtaking will not be easy.

Hamilton was the fastest man on Friday Practice sessions in dry conditions. But the team had already taken the penalty before going on to the track.

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Overtaking is quite difficult here: Andrew Shovlin

As reported by formule1.nl, Shovlin mentioned that overtaking is difficult in Turkey as they saw in the practice sessions. He hopes Lewis could clear the field quickly, but knows it will not be that easy.

“Overtaking is quite difficult here,” said Andrew Shovlin.

“It’s often a bit more difficult in free practice because you don’t do long stints on the tires. You don’t really get the differences in tire degradation that builds up. 

So in that regard, today’s indications are probably that it’s a little trickier than we’d like. But you don’t always get what you want.” said the Mercedes engineer.

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Mercedes engineering director reveals the plan for Lewis Hamilton in qualifying

Because of the 10-place grid penalty, Hamilton will hope to qualify as high as possible to limit the damage. Shovlin stated they will purposely put Hamilton in the traffic to gauge the performance of the car.

“He’s just going to do qualifying. We still want to get him as far on the grid as possible. Of course, that is very different if you have a grid penalty of ten places compared to a grid penalty that puts you at the very back.

So it was otherwise a standard program for him. We purposely put it behind traffic for a few laps to see what the car does when you follow someone.” said Andrew.

Lewis will target the end of the qualifying on pole position to start 11th in the race. Being outside the top-10 will give him the free tire choice in the race which could come in handy.

Where will Hamilton qualify? Let us know.