Lewis Hamilton has revealed that the data showcased that his Mercedes Formula 1 car was “three-wheeling” the moment he spun out of the United States Grand Prix.
Hamilton, who started down in 18th in Austin, had gained six spots on the opening two laps when he lost his car at the penultimate turn and got beached in the gravel.
The Briton’s incident happened at the same corner that George Russell crashed at in qualifying, leading Hamilton to suggest that Mercedes’ updates were responsible.
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff denied that there is a “fundamental issue” with the team’s newest parts, although he did insist that Hamilton was blameless in the incident.
READ MORE: Mercedes denies ‘fundamental issue’ with F1 upgrades amid Lewis Hamilton concern
That view was backed up when Mercedes Technical Director James Allison divulged that the spins emanated from it attempting to run its car too close to the ground.
Asked to pinpoint the reason behind the rapid regression that Mercedes experienced last weekend, Allison said: “That is the million-dollar question.
“Not only did George nearly secure the pole in that [Sprint pole] session, but Lewis also nearly smashed it utterly out the park.
“He was way ahead of any of the times until he got a bit tangled up with [Franco] Colapinto.
“Why that did not materialise in the rest of the weekend, is the key question for us. My guess is that we were flirting a bit too closely with the ground.
“These cars like running low and you generally pick up lap time as you can get the car nearer to the ground. But, push it too far and the car starts behaving in an unpleasant fashion.
“If you just hit a bump wrong, it will unseat the car, make the rear end come out on you and just deliver a level of performance that, when it is good, it is great.
“But if you just hit a bump at the wrong moment or a crosswind at the wrong time, then you get punished for it.
“My guess is that we were just pushing our luck a little bit too much in terms of how near to the ground we got, how stiff we ran it.”
Hamilton explains scale of Mercedes issues
But Hamilton has expanded even more on the issues Mercedes was combating as he explained how the rear end of his W15 was rising on his approach up to Turn 19.
“We can see in the data that we have three wheeling, so the left wheel starts moving so the car is jacking basically,” Hamilton told media including Motorsport Week.
“We can see from the rear the ride height oscillating a lot, so 12-15mm difference going into the corner and we can see a 40km tailwind.
“So you can imagine there’s a small window where the downforce is perfect and if you’re too high then you fall off the peak and the other side you go over the peak.
“So I think it’s a combination of all those things. If you watch the video the car is bouncing, the left wheel starts bouncing and then I think you just lose load.
“And I think the floor is probably a little bit more sensitive maybe than the previous floor.
“But I’ve kept it on this weekend because there’s a much less bouncier circuit and we need to get more data on it.”
READ MORE: Mercedes has no more substantial updates planned in F1 2024
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