Following Lewis Hamilton’s voluntary decision to let George Russell pilot the updated front wing during the Monaco Grand Prix, Mercedes has disclosed that they will “alternate” which of their drivers receives any of the new enhancements first.
Russell’s car was driven by Mercedes, which had only one new front wing available for the Monaco weekend.
After the weekend, it was revealed that Hamilton had let his teammate run it instead of requiring a “coin-toss” out of concern for breaking it and maybe having to start from the pit lane because of parc ferme regulations.
Teams usually offer the upgrade to the driver who is ahead in the points standings first, but at Mercedes it doesn’t appear to be the case.
The drivers will take turns receiving the upgrade if Mercedes only has one available for a given weekend.
In their most recent YouTube video, Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin stated, “We’re looking to have race quantities of that wing in Montreal.” “Normally, you would argue that there should be at least three race quantities because you should have one for each car and one extra in case something goes wrong. We didn’t make all three at once, though.
First, we create the first, followed by the second and third. As a result, we had one that we could take to Monaco and prepare for the weekend by having it ready by Friday. “Why do we always wait until we’ve got a full set?” the drivers asked a while back. Why don’t we each just give it a go?
We therefore concurred with them that, given the team’s performance condition, we needed to learn and grow, and it would be beneficial to have alternative car specifications to help us achieve that. We did, therefore, reach an agreement with the drivers whereby we would be pleased to bring one to the track, and they were both satisfied with that.
“The challenging issue was how to choose who should be in charge. Lewis really remarked, “Let George run it in Monaco if we are going to start doing this where we don’t have both parts.” From now on, we will only alternate since there will be races in the future where we will only get one update. Lewis really made that choice very easy for us to choose.
Last time out in the principality, Mercedes probably had their most competitive weekend of the year thanks to Russell, who qualified within 0.3s of pole position and finished sixth ahead of Max Verstappen.
Shovlin acknowledged that the real impact of the new front wing won’t be realised until perhaps Barcelona because of Monaco’s special circumstances.
He went on, “The very low speed nature of the circuit is the reason teams don’t bring upgrade kits to Monaco.”
Because of the narrow straights and high volume of activity, it is difficult to assess anything. However, every piece of evidence we have seen indicates that it was producing results. It was serving a useful purpose. George felt that the way the car was feeling was a positive development and was satisfied with it.
“Based on what we have seen thus far, we are undoubtedly satisfied. We’ll learn more from Montreal, and you can really start learning about it there when you get to a circuit like Barcelona, which has a greater variety of cornering speeds.