Mercedes has revealed that now having a Formula 1 car that is in a better window from the outset at a race weekend has contributed to Lewis Hamilton’s turnaround.
The German marque began the season struggling with a revamped W15 challenger that was proving inconsistent and unpredictable across sessions for both drivers.
Hamilton appeared to be struggling more with Mercedes’ setback as George Russell had a consistent edge over the seven-time champion under single-lap conditions.
However, Hamilton has come alive since Mercedes’ recent resurgence to record two victories in the past three races with wins at Silverstone and Spa-Francorchamps.
Shovlin believes that Mercedes starting each grand prix with a better baseline set-up to build upon has been an aspect that has helped inspire Hamilton’s 2024 uptick.
“I think early on perhaps Lewis was finding the car more difficult to deal with,” Shovlin told media including Motorsport Week in Belgium.
“One of the areas that we’ve improved with the car is being able to land the set-up in FP1.
“That’s a good foundation to start building on performance and fine-tuning it that helps your weekend enormously.
“In the early part of the year, we were making relatively small changes and suddenly the whole car balance left us and we were really struggling.
“So that certainly helped and it’s probably fair to say that in the earlier races Lewis was finding it more difficult to set up than George.”
Shovlin has credited both drivers for being prepared to run experimental car set-ups during the nascent rounds to help Mercedes extract the W15’s inherent potential.
“I think there’s a certain driving style that suits these tyres,” he acknowledged.
“You tend to find that the two drivers are never that far apart on set-up now, so once the car’s in a good window the same thing’s working pretty well for both of them.
“Between sessions they’re studying what the other one’s doing to try and find where the gains are.
“But through the year the two of them have been working together early on.
“Neither of them wanted to be finishing where we were and they were able to help each other through trying different experiments with setup and driving style.
“And overall you progress as a team and that’s how a team with two drivers works.”
