Mercedes’ trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin can understand the frustrations of Lewis Hamilton with data revealing how a pole position challenge at Monza collapsed.
Qualifying has not always served as a highlight of the F1 2024 season for Hamilton, who finds himself 12-4 down to team-mate George Russell, though the Italian GP drew a particularly strong response from a “furious” Hamilton as he was consigned to P6 on the grid.
The battle for pole position was incredibly tight, with less than two-tenths ultimately splitting Lando Norris on pole and Hamilton in P6, who told Sky F1 that he was “Furious. Absolutely furious, because I could have been pole.”
And the data supports that claim, Shovlin revealing that Hamilton was in the hunt for pole, but at the final corner, those chances went up in smoke.
Asked, as part of Mercedes’ Italian GP debrief, whether Hamilton’s frustrations meant a little bit of pace was left out there, Shovlin replied: “I’m sure we could’ve done a bit better.
“And the root of Lewis’ frustrations is evident when you look at the GPS data to see that going into that final corner, we were within half a tenth of Lando and his pole position lap, but then the last corner for Lewis didn’t work out particularly well.
“He lost a bit of time there, and had it not been for that, he could’ve easily been on the front row if not challenging for pole.
“Now not a dissimilar story with George as well, he was going pretty close going into that final corner, it was a bit better for him and that earned him the P3 position.
“But what we’ve seen in the recent races is that fights for the front of the grid is actually extending all the way down to P7, P8. You can get so many cars there within two tenths of a second, and that’s the sort of margin where it really comes down to whether the drivers put that lap together.
“And frustratingly for Lewis, he’d shown great pace in Q2, didn’t quite get it right for that final run in Q3, and you can drop all the way down to P6. It’s just how tight it is at the moment.”
Hamilton would improve to P5 come the Italian Grand Prix chequered flag on Sunday, with Russell finishing P7.
