Mercedes explain crucial Hamilton weak point

Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin has explained why Lewis Hamilton is being comfortably beaten by team-mate George Russell in qualifying this season.

Saturdays have previously been a Hamilton speciality, with the seven-time F1 champion claiming a record-breaking 104 pole positions in his 344-grand prix career.

Only one of those poles, however, has been in the last two and a half years since the current ground-effect era came into force in 2022.

And this season has been Hamilton's worst to date compared to a team-mate as he has been out-qualified by Russell 10-2 over the 12 grands prix.

Shovlin concedes that Russell "has always set a very high bar in qualifying" but there are reasons as to why Hamilton is not at the one-lap level of his fellow Briton this season.

"Lewis hasn't disguised the fact that Saturdays were his tough day," said Shovlin. "He's struggled with this whole generation of car, really, not suiting his style. He's been working on how he drives.

"But we have had a huge amount of work trying to get the car to be quicker - it just hasn't been quick enough - but also with a handling balance that the drivers can actually attack the lap on Saturday. So we've made progress.

"Recently, George has out-qualified Lewis by some fairly fine margins. So it's great for the team that Lewis is back up there and he'll be pushing on. We'll keep working on that, and I'm sure that we'll hopefully see some more Lewis pole positions as well."

Thankfully for Mercedes, Shovlin stated that Hamilton's long run pace "is always there", which has "been really useful".

Qualifying, however, has been the 39-year-old's nemesis which has naturally affected his chances of high points-scoring finishes.

Detailing specifically why Saturdays have been so difficult, Shovlin said: "It's more the way he wants to attack a corner.

"When you do that, then the car would snap to oversteer. You start to build tyre temperature. So most of our work has been trying to give him a car that you can drive the very attacking style, extract the lap time out of it without it breaking away on the way in and catching him by surprise."