Mercedes explain cause of Hamilton and Russell Monza ‘hot seat’ struggles
Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin has revealed what caused Lewis Hamilton and George Russell to have to endure extreme temperatures in the cockpits of the W15s at Monza.
Over the Italian Grand Prix weekend, particularly on Friday, both drivers were heard over team radio complaining of the heat inside their cars.
The weekend in Northern Italy saw high temperatures, which led to concerns of high tyre degradation.
It also, evidently, caused more extreme driving conditions for some of the drivers, with Mercedes seemingly the worst affected.
“The most significant cause was in Monza it was extremely hot,” Shovlin explained
“The seat and the car is always running pretty hot and there’s a lot of heat generated by the power unit that you’re trying to dissipate.
“You’ve also got a lot of electronic boxes and those are working quite hard and they generate their own temperature so you’re trying to lose that out of the cockpit.
“You’ve also got the car down the straights in Monza, there is a few places where the planks hitting the road and that will in itself will generate temperature through friction and that will start to sort of begin to conduct up through the floor of the car and into the driver’s seat.
“With the ambient temperature at 34 [degrees celsius], nothing can be below that, you’ve also got numerous heat sources and it just pushes it up so the cockpit starts to get considerably above a driver’s body temperature, it’s then very hard for them to cool down and the heat just builds and builds.”
Hamilton and Russell, who finished fifth and seventh respectively, had shown strong one-lap pace in spite of the hostile working environment.
The latter lined up third on the grid. However, with the top four teams so closely matched the former’s sub-optimal lap left him starting sixth.
Shovlin acknowledged the “difficult” situation the pair were operating in, whilst also highlighting it is something the drivers train and prepare for.
The 50-year-old shared that the team – and F1 as a whole – is, however, looking at ways to improve the conditions in the cockpit.
“They’re used to driving in these very difficult environments, it’s just that when you get the very hottest races, it’s a bit extreme and it really does test them,” he said.
“They do a lot of training, they do a lot of training at temperature, but the fact is once the cockpit’s getting hotter than they are, getting rid of that heat is nigh on impossible.
“Now, we are looking at ways at which we can improve the situation for our drivers, within the sport as well they are looking at means that we can apply additional equipment to the car at these exceptional races that will keep the drivers a bit cooler, but as I said it is a very challenging environment and that is why they do so much training.”
