14 June 2023 , 14:37
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Lewis Hamilton admitted there is nothing his Mercedes team can do to fix his main bugbear about his W14 car.
The Silver Arrows started the 2023 season slowly – literally. Like all the other cars on the grid, theirs was well off the pace of the Red Bull RB19s, but Aston Martin had also got the better of them.
It wasn't until their most recent round of upgrades that things began to change. Monaco wasn't the best place to test them, but the Spanish Grand Prix provided an ideal chance to see how much progress they had made.
Other than the Red Bulls, Mercedes had the quickest cars on track in Barcelona and made the most of it. Hamilton finished second with George Russell one place behind – the team's first double podium of the year.
It remains to be seen how much closer to the Red Bulls Mercedes truly are. Team boss Toto Wolff himself admitted that the Spain track was well suited to their car and that they don't expect to be quite as efficient in Montreal this weekend.
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One thing for sure, though, is that the team certainly hasn't fixed all its problems yet. And, in a gloomy-sounding assessment of the situation, Hamilton doesn't expect it to be possible to fix the main issue he has.
He has complained on several occasions about his seating position in the car. The driver is placed much further forward in the W14 compared to other cars, which does not suit Hamilton's driving style and makes him uncomfortable when in the cockpit.
Lewis Hamilton is uncomfortable with his seating position in the W14 (HOCH ZWEI/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images)He said earlier this year: "We sit closer to the front wheels than all the other drivers. You feel like you're sitting on the front wheels which is one of the worst feelings to feel when you're driving a car. It makes it harder to predict compared to when you're further back and sitting more centred."
But the seven-time world champion is aware that it is far from a simple problem to fix. "There's nothing you can do about it – that's just the way it is," he said about the seating position issue, as quoted by F1i.com.
"The only things you can do is ultimately try to slow the rate of rotation, stabilise the rear end. That's something you try and do on mechanical balance, but you're just limited with the tools you have."