Mercedes Formula 1 drivers Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas have swapped chassis between the Azerbaijan and French Grands Prix.
The change is part of the adapted plan adopted by the team after Bottas’s crash in the Emilia Romagna GP in April.
Bottas has taken over chassis six, which Hamilton used for the first six races of the season, for the French Grand Prix weekend. Hamilton is now in chassis four, which Bottas used from Portugal to Azerbaijan.
Bottas had started the season in chassis five, although it temporarily dropped out of the rotation following his accident with Williams driver George Russell. Mercedes plans to bring back chassis five later in the season and it also has chassis three available as a spare.
While the swap has led to speculation about the reasoning for the change, Mercedes has indicated it’s purely to do with managing the workload of the four chassis it has in use for this season. This tallies with what Bottas has said previously.
“I have a different chassis this weekend,” said Bottas on Thursday.
“It’s not a new chassis, it’s different. It was always planned for me to change to a different chassis at this point.”
Bottas enjoyed a much better Friday at Paul Ricard than his miserable opening day in Baku. He topped FP1 and was just 0.008s slower than Max Verstappen in FP2 even though Bottas set his time on a slower tyre.
“It’s hard to say if it’s chassis or track conditions, but it’s a lot better feeling than two weeks ago,” Bottas confirmed after FP2.
“I am confident with the car. I can trust the car and I think that is the biggest difference.”
The two monocoques are from the original batch of six used last year as 2020’s W11 and the current W12 have identical chassis.
This chassis is considered part of a pool and not specifically allocated to one driver and the monocoques in question have previously been raced by both Mercedes drivers.
Chassis four was first raced at last year’s 70th Anniversary Grand Prix at Silverstone by Hamilton, while Bottas was the first to race chassis six in the 2020 Portuguese Grand Prix.
Hamilton said, “there’s something not right with the car” during FP2 at Paul Ricard, during which he lapped 0.245s slower than Bottas, although he did not elaborate on his concerns or indicate any concerns about the chassis itself.
When quizzed about the chassis change after the session, he reported that it felt no different to his previous car.
“Even though the position is quite a bit different to Monaco and Baku, [it’s still] quite a struggle this weekend,” Hamilton added.
“I don’t know if it is the track surface or temperature or these inflated tyres. [Pirelli] put the pressures up higher than ever before, so one of the highest, so it’s difficult to say. But we’re all sliding around. It’s a struggle out there I think for everyone.”
As part of the management of its chassis, Mercedes completes regular checks to ensure they are operating as expected.
“We swap parts around all the time and this is part of the planning of these carryover chassis,” Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff told Sky Sports F1.
“They run for a second season so we are not accumulating millions of miles on one and basically that’s part of the plan.
“But it’s good to get the feedback and if it calms the driver’s mind we have a spare chassis, which is a brand new one, we can always do that.”
