Before his win at Hungary Lewis equaled his longest steak without a win since 2009 of 11 races; (Brazil 2012 to Hungary 2013) 5 races before illegal test: 1 pole, 2 podiums, (Worst result 12th) 5 races after illegal test: 3 poles, 2 podiums // 1 win (Worst result 5th) Was it because of the test bringing him back into the game and handing him his win plus the upturn in form? Or should we give more credit to Mercedes/Lewis for just doing a great job in this period? Your thoughts?
I don't think so, people give a good opinion here and I trust them to give a proper response on the subject however controversial.
i would trust they'll get angry and go into denial mode because you dared to suggest anything other than Hamilton's colossal talent is the reason that he's winning. So yeah, good luck with that.
Bit of everything really... Test-gate obviously helped, but there was always going to be a settling in period.
No doubt testgate has been a massive help to Mercedes, but there clearly has been a lot of other work gone in to make the Mercedes better. Their increase in pace also carried on despite missing the young drivers test where other teams had a chance to evaluate tyres as well so Mercedes could have lost some ground to other teams. IMHO it's a combination of 3 things :- 1. Lewis getting to grips with the car better, which can be seen as Rosberg has been trailing him since Monaco 2. Mercedes have made upgrages which have made the car quicker and look after its tyres better, which was evident to a point at some of the pre-Monaco races as well 3. Testgate was a help to Mercedes by cementing the above two points.
Ah, mark is here to pre-empt something that no-one was going to say, give it a rest As I have said previously, it would perhaps be fair, but to suggest that it is entirely the result of the test seems to me an example of post hoc ergo propter hoc, especially the Monaco result given that there is no conceivable way that Mercedes could have brought upgrades to Monaco in time.
Rather than just try to provoke, what's your opinion on Mercedes apparent upturn in fortune? Testgate alone, or other factors?
That pretty much sums it up for me. As the season has gone on Hamilton has got better (adapted to the car etc.) and the Mercedes has become a better car. To summarise the question in hand Would it be wrong to say Lewis was "nowhere" until test-gate? It wouldn't be wrong or right in my eyes. He wasn't nowhere but he was way short of where he is now... if that makes sense. Finally, apologies to Mark who seems to have issues with the H word, was a thoughtless thing to make a topic about Silver!
I think everyone else has already answered this pretty well. Judging against Rosberg, you can see that it took Hamilton some time to find his feet, but judging against other cars, you can see Mercedes have clearly improved. Their tyre problems have been known for ages though, so they'll have been working on them since before the car even launched, they were always going to improve it eventually. Has the test accelerated that? Possibly. Have the characteristics of recent tracks helped? Most likely. It's too complicated an issue to put it down to a single factor.
Test gate helped the team know doubt but as others have pointed out perhaps Lewis is now fully settled in the team and thus we are seeing the best of him now. (Relatively speaking). Also it should not be forgotten that Lewis drove pretty well in the first four races of the season, well before testgate so while it has helped I'd say Lewis just hit a bit of a dip during Spain and Monaco and now on tracks where he has always gone well at he is performing very well.
