Lewis Hamilton has revealed that he is struggling with the cockpit position of the W14 Mercedes Formula 1 car, which he says is too far forward.
Hamilton’s comment came ahead of last weekend’s Australian Grand Prix, where he took his first podium of the 2023 campaign.
Mercedes has struggled for performance since the start of the 2022 season, when new technical regulations were introduced.
However, Hamilton has revealed that a further problem he is having inside the car is being positioned too close to the front, which he says makes it harder to predict how it will behave.
“I don’t know if people know but we sit closer to the front wheels than all the other drivers,” he said. “Our cockpit is too close to the front.
“When you’re driving 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.
“If you were driving your car at home and you pulled the wheels right under your legs you would not be happy when you were approaching the roundabout!
“So what that does is it just really changes the attitude of the car and how you perceive its movement, and it makes it harder to predict compared to when you’re further back and sitting more centre I would say.
“It’s something I have just really struggled with. On top of that we have an aero characteristic that is just too far forwards.
“Rather than being rear sat down as you begin to turn and coming off the breaks and then moving rearwards or the other way round, we have one that is very forwards, very much on the nose early on and then shifts later on.
“So it’s doing the opposite of what we want, and that’s what we’re trying to fix.”
2009 World Champion Jenson Button, who partnered Hamilton at McLaren for three years, offered an explanation to the situation.
“Well, he’s not feeling and I think that’s the biggest problem,” he said.
“With Lewis, the way he drives, you know, he’s quite aggressive on the throttle, quite aggressive on the brake and he does everything through the steering wheel, so he really needs to feel what’s happening through the rear of the car through his arms.
“And he’s not getting that, so he doesn’t have that confidence to push the car.
“And these cars are tricky anyway, they’re always on edge, especially in qualifying. And if he doesn’t have that confidence, he’s not able to get the maximum out of it.”
However, the problem hasn’t been raised by George Russell, Hamilton’s current team-mate – but Button thinks that this is due to a different driving style between the pair.
“I think George has a different way of driving,” Button said.
“I haven’t seen George’s data, I just know the way Lewis drives because I’ve seen his data and it surprises me how different he drives to me, for example.
“And if George is a driver that always tries to keep the steering wheel as calm as possible, do everything through the throttle and brakes, manipulating the car that way, he’s probably not going to react so badly with this change to the car.”
