The “stratospheric” Hamilton laps that put Mercedes’ F1 rivals on alert

Although the team ultimately squandered its chances of winning from pole position due to a chaotic race from George Russell and Lewis Hamilton, an even greater drop in race pace over the weekend caused rivals to reconsider their position of Mercedes in the pecking order.

As McLaren team boss Andrea Stella admitted, Mercedes is currently delivering a car that, at least in dry conditions, cannot keep up with what his team is capable of at certain points during a race weekend.

“I already told some of your colleagues on Thursday that I think Mercedes is one of the fastest teams,” he said.

“Some of the lap times they did in Monaco, some of the lap times they did in the previous events, were out of our reach at this point in the weekend.

“We couldn’t have achieved that lap time at that point in the weekend, even with little fuel and the engine running.

“They clearly had potential and I think they are starting to learn how to use it.”

One of those unattainable moments occurred on Saturday morning in Canada, when Hamilton dominated the final free practice session with a lap 0.374 seconds faster than Max Verstappen’s Red Bull.

While some of this gap may have been increased by the use of an extra set of soft tyres, it would be wrong to say this run was just for show and does not give a true picture of relative form.

Looking back on the weekend and the team’s promising performances, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff was clear that it was not this single lap that provided the best insight into the situation.

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images

“In FP3, Lewis drove a lap that was out of this world. It was so fast,” said Wolff. “Then his long run was stratospheric, galactic. So there was a lot of pace.”

This long run from FP3 is indeed interesting as not many teams tried to do a few race runs in the last practice session – since Friday’s runs were so badly interrupted by the weather.

Hamilton’s long run went as follows: 1m18.224s, 1m8.278s, 1m17.969s, 1m17.533s, then a breakaway followed by 1m17.559s and 1m18.490s.

Max Verstappen drove a comparatively long run a little later in the session, which produced the following times: 1m18.777s, 1m18.419s, 1m17.980s, 1m17.884s, 1m17.982s, 1m17.935s, 1m18.334s, 1m18.889s, 1m18.327s.

The data alone probably puts Hamilton’s run slightly ahead, so he doesn’t quite reach the “stratospheric” brilliance that Wolff spoke of.

What we don’t know, of course, is the fuel load, and that could be the answer to why Wolff was so happy. If Hamilton could maintain that form with a fairly large tank, that looked very promising indeed.

The impression that Mercedes made on the competition in Canada was not just limited to the lap times, as other signs emerged over the course of the weekend that showed that the team’s strong form was becoming more apparent.

Throughout the season, the W15 showed signs of speed, but not consistently. The team struggled in particular when it came to getting the most out of the car in both slow and fast corners.

Toto Wolff, Team Principal and CEO of the Mercedes-AMG F1 Team, at the pit wall

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

By eliminating understeer at low speeds, it made the W15 a tricky beast at high speeds thanks to oversteer. But by eliminating the nervous rear end at high speeds, the car didn’t want to turn in at slower corners.

The new front wing is the icing on the cake of a series of improvements that Mercedes has made in recent races and has gone a long way towards solving these balance problems.

And it may well be that this final step was necessary to give Hamilton and Russell the opportunity to fully realise the potential they have had for some time. That is the real story of what we saw in Canada.

McLaren team boss Andrea Stella said that even after looking at some of the onboard footage of the Mercedes cars in action, he had no doubts about the current strengths of the W15 package.

“It doesn’t surprise me that Mercedes has been able to improve performance by working on the front wing,” he said.

“There’s a chance they’ve also fixed some issues they had with the previous front wing. Maybe it was just too experimental or it didn’t perform as expected.”

“But it looks like their front end looks very strong thanks to the front wing development they have done.

“And even if you look at the onboards I’ve seen from the Mercedes drivers, they hardly have to turn the steering wheel to get the nose of the car to the apex. That’s a good feature sometimes!”

Watch: Race report from the Canadian GP – Wet and wild vs. cool and calm