BAKU, Azerbaijan -- Mercedes has shed some light on the engine setting problem Lewis Hamilton faced during the Grand Prix of Europe.
After starting tenth, Hamilton managed to work his way up to fifth but struggled to make any further progress due to an incorrect engine setting. Effectively the Energy Recovery System (ERS) was harvesting power on sections of the track where it should have been deploying extra electrical energy to the rear wheels.
The problem was first reported via team radio ahead of lap 30 and it was not until lap 42 that Hamilton resolved the issue -- seeing him lap over a second faster. However, with Sergio Perez over ten seconds up the road by that point, Hamilton opted to save his engine for the rest of the race.
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said the setting issue occurred on both Mercedes cars.
"We had a configuration setting problem, an electronic setting problem but with engine modes, which occurred on both cars," Wolff said. "Because by regulations we're not allowed to tell the driver, they needed to figure it out themselves.
"Nico was in the more fortunate situation that he did a switch change just before, which kind of led him on the right path. So within half a lap he went back into the right mode. Lewis because he didn't have that right path, it took him a while to figure it out, 12 laps. And this is what for sure affected his race.
"We don't know how much it is, we need to analyse how much it is. As per the data it is 0.2 seconds per lap but it must affect much more because the engine was de-rating between Turn 2 and 3 where you expect the biggest boost, and that probably subconsciously affects him as if his ERS was off."
Wolff said the reason for the incorrect preset had its roots in Friday practice.
"The settings were wrong because we had a messy Friday where we couldn't configure it in the way we should have done," he added. "So it was preset in the wrong way. And it happened a little bit earlier on Lewis' car than on Nico's car, I think it was three laps earlier.
"You're permanently trying to optimise the modes and this was an optimisation which we felt we needed to have on the car and which needed the right calibration."