Lewis Hamilton’s idea to reduce the dangers of car tripping over each other in the final sequence of corners at Baku has been ruled out following resistance from Formula 1 teams.
The Ferrari driver has called for tweaks to the energy management rules at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix to avoid a repeat of the near-miss situation that he faced with Liam Lawson in practice on Thursday.
That incident, where Lawson had to take avoiding action at 300km/h to not hit the back of the Ferrari through the Turn 18/19 sweeps at Baku, exposed how a quirk with F1’s 2026 rules had increased risks of trouble.
With the current energy starved cars, the long flat-out run from Turn 16 to the start/finish line has triggered a big speed offset this weekend between those on out laps and those on timed runs.
This is because those preparing to go for a push lap want to conserve use of any battery until nearer the start-finish line, so they run through the high speed section at Turn 18/19 without any extra deployment.
Hamilton felt that closing speeds of 50km/h, plus the difficulty of judging gaps when running full throttle without maximum power, required a rethink on energy management.
During a hearing with the stewards on Thursday night to discuss the Lawson incident, for which Hamilton picked up a reprimand, he suggested that the FIA should mandate full use of energy until after Turn 19.
Hamilton said: “I said to them [the stewards] what they should do is on a single lap, when we're doing a push lap, we get max power out of the last corner.
“Then, when you come through [Turn 19], it resets, and you have a little bit more power in here. There should just be nobody going slow ever through [Turns] 18/19.”
The Race has learned that this suggestion was brought up with the FIA in Thursday night’s drivers’ briefing as a way to ensure that speed differentials were reduced in this particularly difficult area of the track.
However, despite being discussed, the idea did not gather support for implementation after teams felt that it was too late in the weekend to make such a dramatic shift in energy deployment patterns over the weekend.
A revision to battery usage on to the main straight would effectively have left teams needing to start their energy preparations from scratch, with just one hour of practice to go before qualifying.
F1 race director Rui Marques has already laid down a request to drivers who are on out laps to stay well off the racing line on the run between Turns 16 and 18 to avoid getting in the way.
Hamilton received a reprimand after FP2 for failing to follow this instruction and impeding Lawson as a result.
from The Race https://ift.tt/QpfgmAL
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