Mercedes make changes to brake magic switch

Lewis Hamilton has confirmed Mercedes have made changes to ensure he doesn’t accidentally hit the brake magic switch again.

Last time out at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, Hamilton was handed a huge opportunity to take victory and the lead in the title fight after Max Verstappen crashed out and caused a standing restart to take place with just two laps to go.

The Mercedes driver got off the line better than leader Sergio Perez but then went straight off at Turn 1 and ultimately dropped out of the points as a result.

After the race, he revealed that the reason for that was that he accidentally hit a switch on his steering wheel that shifted brake balance forward considerably.

Mercedes have now taken action to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

“We haven’t moved it, we’ve just put a shroud around it,” Hamilton said at Paul Ricard.

“Just to make sure that you can’t accidentally touch it in the future, but that’s for the short-term.

“Obviously the wheel’s not so easy to change or to move buttons on, because it’s all designed, so we’ll look for a longer-term solution probably in the future.”

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Baku was the second round in a row that Hamilton left disappointed after he could only claim P7 at the Monaco Grand Prix.

Given such struggles, he’s happy to return to a track that he has dominated at in the past, winning in both 2018 and 2019.

That being said, the seven-time World Champion is expecting tougher competition this time around with Red Bull looking so strong.

“I’ve had two really bad races, so it’s good to come back to a track that we’ve been successful on before,” he added.

“But it’s a different time and we have no idea how close everybody is going to be this weekend, we’ve seen such a great close battle with all the teams, particularly in the last race.

“So it’ll be interesting to see, but I think after these two difficult races I feel amped that we can hopefully get a better result.

“It has been good for us in the past here but I anticipate a tough weekend, naturally. Obviously, the Red Bulls have shown some serious pace over the previous races, as well as on the more conventional tracks like Barcelona.”

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