“We had a cut in the tyre,” Andrew Shovlin reckons Lewis Hamilton avoided disaster after contact with Carlos Sainz at the Dutch GP

Andrew Shovlin, the trackside engineer for Mercedes, feared another DNF from Lewis Hamilton. Hamilton almost had a race-ending contact at the very first lap but came out of it safely. Though he got a bit of damage, Lewis anyhow managed to stay in the winning contention almost till the end of the race. Ultimately due to poor strategy, Hamilton ended his race in fourth, but he probably had his best race performance of the season.

Carlos Sainz and Lewis Hamilton made a contact on the very first lap of the race. The seven-time winner made a move from the dirty side of the track to snatch Ferrari driver’s third place but got his front tyre on Carlos’ side pod. Though both drivers were able to continue the race, Lewis’ performance wasn’t really hindered due to this contact.

“Now, the damage wasn’t very significant in terms of performance, but we did have damage to the front wing endplate which would have been costing in balance and a little bit of downforce on the car,” said Andrew.

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Andrew Shovlin predicted a puncture for Lewis Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton lost out to Max Verstappen for a poor strategy. Mercedes didn’t opt for soft tyres on Lewis’ car after the safety car ended and that forced the driver to the fourth position from the top. Max, George Russell and Charles Leclerc all were on a brand new set of softs and easily managed to pass Lewis.

But none of it would have happened if Lewis would have had a puncture after he received a cut in his long-lasting hard tyres. “The other thing is we had a cut in the tyre that we didn’t know about until we got the tyre back at the end of that stint. Now, luckily that didn’t cause a puncture, but it would have been very close to causing a serious problem bringing Lewis in on lap one,” said Andrew.

Mercedes are now catching Ferrari for the second spot in the championship. They are thirty points behind the title contesting team even though they had a much slower car at the start of the season.

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