Mercedes has revealed that it will make a change to the steering wheel that caused Lewis Hamilton's error that shifted the brake bias of the car to the front which resulted in him locking up the brakes when the race in Baku restarted after the red flag. The button in the equation dubbed "brake magic" will be rejigged revealed Mike Elliot, the technology director for Mercedes and soon to become the technical director taking over from James Allison.
"Lewis had done all the right things, he got the car to the grid, he switched off the various buttons and settings he needed to switch off, switched on the ones he needed to switch on, it was all set to start the race properly," said Elliott.
"He made a fantastic start, he got himself up alongside Perez and as he and Perez were sort of shuffling position Lewis swerved and in the process of swerving he just clipped the magic button and unfortunately he didn't feel he had done it. So, he had completely no awareness he was going to have a problem. The point he then braked, which was the normal point for him to brake, he was in the position where he got all of the brake balance shifted forward, which put all of the load through the front tyres and as a consequence they locked and from that point there was nothing that he could do than go wide," Elliot further explained.
Lewis Hamilton could've won the race at Baku had he not locked up
Photo Credit: AFP
Mercedes is known to have a no-blame culture and in an interview, Elliott credited Hamilton for being almost peerless and took some of the responsibility for the mistake.
"I know speaking to Lewis yesterday that Lewis sort of feels a chunk of the blame for that, but the reality is Lewis makes so few mistakes and that's what really sets him apart from some of the other drivers. It's our duty to try and give him a car where it's more difficult for him to make mistakes. We need to take our share of that, look at how we can improve that and that's something we will put in place for the next race," he said.
Elliot also explained what the Brake Magic button did. He explained that the button enabled the drivers to get heat into the tyres and also shift the proportion of the brake balance from the front to brake or vice versa - and by doing so via the rims the tyres would also get heated up.
