The Mercedes team has confirmed that they will be making one vital change to the car after a quick mistake by Hamilton in Baku ruined his chance of landing points for the team.
After accidentally pushing the ‘magic’ brake button on the right-hand backside of the steering wheel, the world champion changed the balance of his brakes to the front tyres and ended up in the run-off area at Turn One.
With the two-lap sprint finale in Azerbaijan – following an incident with Max Verstappen’s tyres – it couldn’t have been a worse time for Hamilton to make the blip on his W12.
In response to the rare mistake by the Mercedes driver, the team has confirmed they will make a change to the car to avoid a similar scenario occurring ever again.
Explaining to spectators what happened in the moments before lights out, Mercedes technology director Mike Elliott said Hamilton had put the car into the correct settings before hitting the ‘magic’ button when Red Bull’s Sergio Perez jinked right to defend his position in the lead.
In the video on YouTube, Elliott said; “Lewis had done all the right things, he got the car to the grid, he switched off the various buttons and settings he needed to switch off, switched on the ones he needed to switch on, it was all set to start the race properly.
“He made a fantastic start, he got himself up alongside Perez, and as he and Perez were sort of shuffling position Lewis swerved, and in the process of swerving he just clipped the magic button and unfortunately he didn’t feel he had done it.
“So, he had completely no awareness he was going to have a problem.
“The point he then braked, which was the normal point for him to brake, he was in the position where he got all of the brake balance shifted forward, which put all of the load through the front tyres and as a consequence they locked and from that point there was nothing that he could do than go wide.”
He went on to say that the team will make changes to rid the chance of this happening again, and suspects the changes will be implemented as soon as the French Grand Prix in a few weeks’ time.
“It’s our duty to try and give him a car where it’s more difficult for him to make mistakes”, he said.
“We need to take our share of that, look at how we can improve that and that’s something we will put in place for the next race.”
