Mercedes reveal thinking behind Hamilton 'yank' set-up

Mercedes has explained its thinking behind giving Lewis Hamilton a set-up in Azerbaijan that left him "yanking" the steering wheel. 

Hamilton was due to start seventh in Baku, but the team elected to take a fresh power unit to replace the one he lost in the failure sustained in Australia, meaning he was relegated to a pit-lane start.

This removed the W15 from parc ferme conditions, which allowed Mercedes to make a sizeable set-up change to the car for the race which it would otherwise not have been able to do so. 

Hamilton climbed up to 11th in the closing stages, but was promoted into ninth place by the late crash for Carlos Sainz and Sergio Perez, with boss Toto Wolff conceding that the team had set Hamilton up for a "race of misery". 

However, trackside engineering chief Andrew Shovlin has now explained in further details the thinking behind the changes, which Hamilton described as leaving him "yanking" the wheel.

"I mean the background is that once you're out of parc fermé you can make any changes that you want to the specification of the car," said Shovlin.

"Now following qualifying Lewis had struggled with the car, George was finding his setup and his balance to be much better suited to the track at that time.

"Lewis was able to get together with his engineers, with Bono (Peter Bonnington) to look at what they might do with the setup to try and evolve it better for the circuit, to try and help the car turn more easily. 

"Those changes were then built onto the car for the race. It wasn't so much that we were putting new or experimental parts, it was more just the opportunity between qualifying and race that you don't normally get to make a significant setup change and then he was able to see how that performed in the long run on Sunday."