Lewis Hamilton had to “twist” his approach his 2019 to minimise the impact of an engineer swap at Mercedes.
The six-time world champion lost his performance engineer Riccardo Musconi to teammate Valtteri Bottas after the Finn’s former race engineer Tony Ross moved to the company’s Formula E program last year.
And while Hamilton had no issue with the change, he admits it did create a situation where he had to overcome the improvements Bottas would make, armed with the experience Musconi had gathered working with him.
“He is a very talented engineer and naturally he wants to progress,” Hamilton said. “No-one wants to stay in the same position and being a lead engineer has got to be a great goal for an engineer.
“But we had learned so much and working together I had pulled things out of him that perhaps he didn’t realise he would have, or maybe it would’ve taken longer to have done, and vice-versa.
“So then when he goes over to the other side, without doubt he’d have been saying, ‘Valtteri, why weren’t you doing these things, Lewis does this, why are you not doing that?’
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“This year it has made it even more challenging, because I’m thinking, ‘OK. How do I twist it? How do I change these small things now that they’re doing the same, without losing performance?’
“Now I’ve got to refine it and take a step up but when it’s already close to 100 per cent, taking that one per cent, the gap closes. So bringing in a new ace is so hard to find.”
Bottas himself also admitted having Musconi in his ear had brought benefits but also highlighted how the swap reflects the relations he and Hamilton have.
“It was good for me to have a change, a different way of working with engineers,” Bottas told Motorsport.
“And also getting Ricci from Lewis’s side, he’s been working with him, so he knows very much in detail about his driving techniques and ways of setting up the car.
“For sure, it was always going to be a great opportunity for me to get maybe something even more than what I normally get in the meetings and what I see from the data.
“It was nice to have that kind of approach on the engineering side.
“There’s never been a problem about that. It definitely shows that we deal with things as they come in,” he added.
“He [Hamilton] is still hungry to be even better than what he is now. For him also, with different people, it’s always an opportunity as well.”