Lewis Hamilton lifted the veil on a secret feature he believes exists at Mercedes during qualifying sessions, and claimed to know how it works.
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After finishing third in the Sprint race of the Chinese Formula 1 GP, Hamilton explained that his years of experience at Mercedes give him a privileged insight: “The difference is that I was at Mercedes for a long, long time, so I know how it works there,” Hamilton told the press.
According to the seven-time champion, the German team uses a special mode, similar to the old ‘party mode’, which allows them to extract extra performance mainly from Q2 onwards: “In the qualifying session, they have another mode they can access, similar to the ‘party mode’ of old, and when they get to Q2, they activate it. We don’t have that feature at Ferrari, so whatever it is, they manage to extract something extra, especially in Q2. You saw in the Sprint qualifying, in SQ1 we weren’t that far off, and suddenly it seemed like a big jump from them. One tenth behind in SQ1, and suddenly it’s seven tenths or more than half a second. It’s a big jump,” he added.
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Hamilton highlighted that, despite this advantage in qualifying sessions, the feature is not used during races, which maintains a certain competitiveness between the cars: “In the race, obviously they don’t have that mode, so they still have an overall advantage. We need to find out what that is, but there is something they manage to extract more, especially in Q2,” he concluded.
During the Sprint race in Shanghai, Hamilton was 0,118s behind George Russell in SQ1, before seeing that gap grow to 0,801s in SQ2 and 0,641s in SQ3. In the GP qualifying session, he finished about three tenths behind Russell in Q1 and a similar amount behind Kimi Antonelli in Q2, finishing Q3 0,351s behind the pole position, who set a new record as the youngest driver in history to take pole in Formula 1.
