Why is Hamilton having such a hard time in the Brazilian GP?

Lewis Hamilton described his W15 as the ‘worst’ car he has driven all year during the Brazilian GP weekend.Lewis Hamilton finished the race from 14th place in the Brazilian Grand Prix weekend , finishing 10th. His teammate George Russell started from the front row and fought for the win.

Hamilton said the car was “very bad” all weekend.

While current on-track performances haven’t been great, perhaps the biggest problem for the team at the moment is that neither Mercedes nor Hamilton have an answer as to what went wrong after Brazil.

Hamilton has suffered a major dip in form since July, when he won two races from three. 

The problem appears to be Hamilton’s lack of confidence in his car, particularly the rear end.

In current-generation ground-effect vehicles, when a pilot loses confidence in the rear of the vehicle, the vehicle slides more, which can lead to tire temperature issues.

So what starts as a small issue can quickly become a much bigger problem, leaving two almost identical cars vastly different in how they progress over the course of a race.

“It’s fair to say Lewis struggled mainly with a lack of rear grip,” said Andrew Shovlin, Mercedes track engineering director.

“But it’s not clear what’s causing this.”

“In racing, when you lose grip and start oversteering, you generate more heat. That makes the problem worse.”

“As with any race, we spend a lot of time looking at the data and trying to understand it. Lewis’ engineering team will be working with him on this issue to make sure we get to the bottom of it before Vegas.”

Hamilton’s struggle to find a setting he feels comfortable with has not been helped by Mercedes’ latest update to Austin.

While the update does contribute to the car providing extra performance on track, there are some questions that it also introduces some behavioural instability, with George Russell and Hamilton both crashing at the same corner in succession in Austin.

“We didn’t perform that well in the dry,” Shovlin added. “But the issues we’re struggling with with this update are the same issues we’ve been struggling with before.”

“The areas where we are weak are the slow corners, especially the corners where one corner comes after another. The car turns a lot and it becomes a weakness that we need to work on.”

It’s understandable that the Brazilian race will be tougher than usual for the team, as the second sector of Interlagos consists almost entirely of interconnected slow corners.

The only positive thing for Hamilton at the moment is that at least Russell’s performance shows what is possible with the car.

Some high-speed races ahead, particularly Qatar, could help highlight the W15’s strengths rather than its weaknesses.

Hamilton admitted that things were not easy at the moment, but that there was no option but to work harder with his team.

“Obviously, it hurts me to have such bad races in the second half of the season. But all I can say is that we are working,” said the Mercedes driver.

“This is not acceptable, so both me and the team have to take responsibility. But I try to drive the car in the best possible way.”

“The car was in the worst shape I’ve seen all season this week and I don’t know what happened. We’ll have to find out.”