James Allison, technical director of Mercedes, said that during the F1 Chinese Grand Prix qualifying, the team ought to have run George Russell and Lewis Hamilton together.

After a disastrous qualifying run in Shanghai, Hamilton was forced to withdraw in the first round and climb from 18th to ninth, three positions behind Mercedes teammate Russell, who had started eighth.

The seven-time world champion’s aggressive setup modification in his W15 after the sprint caused him to struggle with balance. Hamilton lost a position in Q2 on his last qualifying lap due to an unusual error at the hairpin.

In retrospect, according to Allison, Mercedes ought to have done more to persuade Hamilton to use the same run strategy as Russell during the first segment of qualifying.

“In the Mercedes post-race debrief video, Allison stated that if you make poor decisions between the sprint portion of the weekend and the main event, you could end up making the car slower and suffering accordingly and you don’t get any, although you get this opportunity to adjust the car. Your first taste of the adjustments you’ve made are in qualifying, in Q1.”

Therefore, if you make a poor decision, you will suffer, and that’s when it truly matters—that’s when you’ll realize you’re suffering. Lewis was quite clear about it after, so I wouldn’t have to make any assumptions about it.

He expressed his sincere desire to have adopted George’s strategy from his first run in Q1, when he fuelled up for two timed laps to get a feel for the vehicle during the first flying lap, followed by a cool-down lap and another taste of the cherry to gain even more feel for it.

Lewis, on the other hand, completed one timed lap later in the session and made it quite evident that he wanted another one. He discovered that his modifications had increased the car’s understeery and made it simpler for it to lock up when braking, and that he was just applying pressure to the front brakes in an awkward manner.

“I believe that everything that happened on his second run—which was only his second timed lap—was visible to all of us. He was simply running down the main straight into the bottom hairpin when he slightly lost form when braking and went deep, losing 0.7 of a second there. Without that significant void, he may have easily progressed to Q3 and beyond.

Thus, he would raise his hand and utter the words “my mistake, my error.” We should, in my opinion, be a little more realistic and admit that we made a mistake by not encouraging him more strongly to pursue a program similar to George’s. As a result, we should be developing a car that is not as complicated as the one we currently have, which is leading to drivers making extremely unusual mistakes.

“We have two of the world’s best drivers, and the car is too tricky, so locking up at the end of a straight into a hairpin is not in Lewis’s recipe book.”

Mercedes will be bringing an improvement package to the upcoming Miami race, and Allison disclosed that the team is also developing “components” that should help with the W15’s challenging handling qualities.

“Our task in the upcoming races is to attempt to modify the car’s setup as well as the components we add to it in order to make it better,” he continued.

“We hope to address the underlying balance that is causing us trouble with the car as well as upgrade packages that are coming for it.”