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It’s not often that you have a defining moment at a Grand Prix before the lights have gone out, but that was the case in Russia, with Lewis Hamilton’s now infamous break of practice starts. Speaking in the F1 nation On the podcast, Silver Arrows Chief Race Engineer Andrew Shovlin explained the team’s role in the contentious incident and how it was unclear who was the first to spot the infraction …
First, Shovlin explained why Hamilton hadn’t stopped where everyone else did.
“In some places there is a box that they paint on the floor and you have to do it [the practice start] in the frame; in other places it’s kind of a general area, ”she said.
READ MORE: FIA refutes Hamilton’s suggestion of ‘they’re trying to stop me’ after Russia sanctions
“Often if there is a lot of rubber [on the ground] it’s not going to be representative of the grip. The drivers, and also the engineers, will want to find it a bit closer in terms of grip than is expected on the grid.
“And what happened was that Lewis asked him if he could go a little further [along the pit exit] – We had not realized how far he was going to go. But it’s really just about finding a bit of asphalt that is more like what you’ll get when you start a race properly. “
Shovlin added that Hamilton’s positioning had only become apparent to Mercedes on their second practice outing, at which point they immediately realized they might be in trouble.
“We didn’t see the first one, when we saw the second we thought ‘they won’t like it,'” he explained.
“We didn’t think it was dangerous and since the event notes said it was on the right hand side after the pit exit, we thought it might have been ambiguous enough that we would have… I mean, when we looked at the position of the car It wasn’t a complete surprise that they didn’t like it, and there certainly may be teams that have scored it as much as if the FIA or the stewards saw it themselves. I do not know.”
You can listen to the full episode of F1 Nation, which contains a full discussion on the Russian Grand Prix, as well as an interview with Mercedes boss Toto Wolff, in the player above. Alternatively, you can listen through Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.
