'Hamilton didn't realise he was pushing the wrong button'

At the Baku GP, Lewis Hamilton made a mistake when he locked his front wheel on the restart and drove off track. In his analysis for Formula 1, Jolyon Palmer explains what went wrong.

It was surprising that Lewis Hamilton managed to qualify ahead of the two Red Bull's at the Baku GP, according to former F1 driver Jolyon Palmer. With his rival Max Verstappen out of the race, this was Hamilton's chance to grab big points. So how could it still go wrong?

Smoke from the Mercedes

"When the lights come on, you can see something is wrong with the Mercedes. You see enormous plumes of smoke coming out of the Mercedes. The front brakes are red-hot and it looks like they are going to catch fire. You can get away with this. Hamilton has been running a huge temperature through his front brakes and as a result they are smoking heavily. But as soon as the car gets up to race speed, they cool down, air flows through them and they're fine again. But it shows how much temperature Hamilton put through the front brakes," Palmer said in his analysis.

Magic button from Mercedes

"But it's a great start by Hamilton, the smoke is gone immediately and he gets on the inside of Perez. This is where the work seems to be done." A great chance for Hamilton to overtake Perez for first place, but it goes wrong. Palmer continued: "To establish a diagnosis we need to get on board and see what's going on. You can see that Lewis starts with his left hand on top of the wheel. That's not usual. You have to hold it with your thumbs through the holes in the steering wheel. To get so much temperature at the front, Mercedes has what is called a magic button. This button causes braking to occur at the front. It generates a huge brake temperature and the reason Mercedes does this is for tyre temperature."

Mercedes does tend to struggle with heating up their front tyres, which is why they designed the special button. Hamilton wanted to press this 'magic button' before the formation lap, but he accidentally pressed it during the start. This caused his front wheels to brake at 90 percent, instead of the usual 50 or 60 percent. So his front wheel locked up because there was too much brake pressure on the two front tyres. He did not realize this.