The older wing cost me two tenths of a second, says Hamilton as Mercedes defends its decision

Seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton claims that he lost two tenths of a second to his team-mate George Russell because he used the team's older front wing specicifation in Monaco.

Mercedes introduced a raft of upgrades in Imola in a bid to turn its season around following a difficult start to its 2024 F1 campaign. The Brackley-based outfit then brought an upgraded front wing to Monaco which featured a heavily-revised endplate.

The upgrade was planned for Canada, but the team managed to bring its introduction forward, albeit there was only a set of new front wings for one driver. Mercedes took the decision to equip George Russell's W15 with a modified front wing which meant that his team-mate Lewis Hamilton ran the older specification in Monaco.

The seven-time world champion ended up seventh quickest in qualifying, two places behind Russell with his quickest lap just under a tenth of a second slower than what his team-mate managed.

Speaking of running the older front wing, Hamilton said: “I anticipated it would be difficult to outqualify George because he has the upgraded component.

“I already know automatically that I’m going to lose two-tenths going into qualifying. That’s definitely frustrating and something that I don’t really have an answer for at the moment. I’m not driving any differently, the laps were really great.

“I’m just lacking something. I don’t anticipate being ahead of George in qualifying, particularly this year, but we’ve just got to just keep pushing and the races are strong,” said Hamilton.

Russell explained that the team wanted to make the decision about the front wing on Tuesday. However, Russell suggested that Hamilton made the decision himself not to use the upgraded part after trying it out in the simulation ahead of the Monaco Grand Prix.

“There was one front wing this weekend and it was agreed on Tuesday that we’d do a coin toss and see who got it. Lewis said he’d tried it on the sim and was happy for me to use it this weekend because it doesn’t go without risk."

Mercedes trackside boss Andrew Shovlin explained that the drivers also urged the team to introduce upgrades as soon as possible without waiting until the factory can produce enough parts and spares for each driver.

“We are looking to have race quantities of that wing in Montreal, and normally you would say race quantities is at least three because you have one for each car, and you have got a spare available should anything happen.

“Now we don’t make three at one go, we make the first, the second and then the third. And an upshot of that was that we had one we could bring to Monaco to have it ready for Friday and the weekend. A while ago, the drivers said “why do we always wait until we have a full set, why not just let one of us run it”.

“So we agreed with them that given the situation with the team in terms of performance, we need to improve, we need to learn. And actually it is quite good to have two different specs on the cars.

“The difficult question was how do we decide who was going to run it? “But Lewis said, if we are going to start doing this where we have not got enough parts, let George run it in Monaco.

“There will be races in the future where we have a single update and of course, we just alternate from here on in. But Lewis made that decision quite simple for us,” explained Shovlin.