Hamilton explains suspension set-up change behind “miserable” Baku weekend · RaceFans

Lewis Hamilton says a minor set-up change made before qualifying for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix had completely the wrong effect to what the team expected.

Hamilton qualified seventh for last weekend’s race in Baku, four tenths slower than his team mate George Russell

He started from the pit lane after changing his power unit but recovered to finish in the top 10, although complained about the handling of his Mercedes throughout the race.

Asked ahead of this weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix why he has appeared to frequently look stronger on Fridays only to be frustrated with his car’s handling and performance when it matters most, Hamilton said there were “a load of different reasons,” for it.

“Earlier in the year, it’s been through making relatively big changes,” he told the official F1 channel. “You change the mechanical balance between high and low speed, for example, by a good chunk or you do big camber set-up changes or you change the rear suspension or the front suspension heave unit, for example.

“The last race, I was like ‘I love the car, don’t change it too much’. The really, really small changes that I made – one of the components – did completely the opposite of what it’s supposed to do and we didn’t find out until the end of the day.

“I got in the car on Saturday morning and I was like ‘I’ve got massive understeer, this doesn’t feel normal’, and they were like, ‘the car should be fine, we’ve set it up normally’. It’s not until the end of the day you find out it’s not the case.”

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Hamilton admitted he was disappointed with the end result in Baku after feeling confident heading into Saturday’s qualifying day. He says he intends to go all out with his remaining races of the season, starting in Singapore.

“Reflecting on last weekend, it started off so positive,” he said. “I was at the factory and doing the simulator preparing, which I don’t do a lot, arrived and first lap I was on it. Then, all of a sudden, it just slipped through our fingers and it was a miserable rest of the weekend.

“You can put it down to so many different things, I think. But we all care so much, everyone’s working so, so hard. More so is coming into this weekend, we’re just going to give it absolutely everything. Whether it goes well or not, it is what it is.

“We’re in that period of time, I think, of the season where we just got to give absolutely everything. And if it doesn’t go well, not necessarily not [caring], but not letting it beat us down and just trying to stay positive. We’ve got seven more shots at it, so we’re going to bowl our hardest.”