Lewis Hamilton is not having the farewell season he would have liked from his once all conquering Mercedes team. HIs qualifying and race count to his team mate is 1-8 after nine rounds and recently fellow racer and IndyNXT winner Jamie Chadwick observed, “George is smashing him.”
Of course the media savvy seven times world champion has deployed a range of excuses for this sorry state of affairs. Early in the season Hamilton presented himself as the driver in the team prepared to make wild setup changes in each practice session to find the silver bullet baseline platform the team has been struggling to find.
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An exasperated Toto Wolff explained to the media after the Chines Grand Prix. “I think where Lewis’ car [was] today was certainly far, far away from the optimum [setup] and then it’s just driving on the knife’s edge. So what is it?”
In a number of different post race interviews Toto made it clear regarding car setup, “Lewis took it on himself,” and observed it was “a step too far…. we made too many extreme changes after the Sprint, and that made the most important part of the weekend much more challenging,” concluded the Mercedes boss.
In a dig at his once star driver Toto also questioned Lewis’ demeanour after such a poor result. “Lewis is in a surprisingly good mood. I don’t know if it’s the knowledge that he will go somewhere else next year. But it’s not like him at all,” quipped Wolff after being told of Hamilton’s post race cheery comments.
The team’s technical director, James Allison, confirmed the setup choices were Hamilton’s alone, but in his ever so polite fashion made it clear the team will decide on these matters going forward.
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“I think we [as a team] would be a little more rounded and say we should have actually encouraged more strongly that he was pursuing a programme a bit more like George’s, so that’s our mistake and we should frankly be making a car that is just not so tricky as the one we’ve got at the moment which is causing the drivers to make very uncharacteristic errors,” Allison said at the team debrief.
Lewis shifted his position in Monaco, now no longer to blame his worthy experimentation Hamilton suggested the team were nobbling him and now favouring Russell. In a cryptic interview he claimed he expected George to continue to out qualify him for the rest of this season.
Asked if he felt Monaco could mark a turning point for Mercedes’ performance this season, Hamilton replied “I think from the team’s perspective, yes.” The suggestion is made there that the team will benefit, but not Lewis himself.
Hamilton added to the tin hat posse’s theories by making the very strange claim: “I don’t anticipate being ahead of George in qualifying, particularly in this year, but we’ve just got to keep pushing. The races are strong.”
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When pushed on why he believed this to be the case, Lewis paused for effect, smiled and replied “we’’see.”
Now Lewis is again suggesting Mercedes may have nobbled him in some way during the recent weekend in Montreal. Hamilton was awesome in Q3 setting a time 0.4 seconds quicker than second place Max Verstappen and with George looking strong as well, hopes were high for an all Mercedes front row before qualifying.
In a dramatic session where George claimed pole position but set the same time as Max Verstappen, Hamilton was mysteriously no where and back down in P7, his favourite sport to start the race t seems this season.
Now Lewis claims his team had not prepared his tyres properly for the qualifying hour. He pointed to his tyre warming blankets claiming they were constantly delivering his tyres below the optimum temperature required. Given it was qualifying Lewis then says he didn’t have enough laps on each set to get them into the correct operating temperature window.
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Lewis’ tyres colder than George’s
“The tyres were working throughout the weekend, then we got to qualifying and every time I went out of the garage, my tyres were for some reason below on temperature,” said the seven times world champion.
“Every set was two or three degrees lower than it should have been, and you can’t catch it up and I couldn’t switch the tyres on after that. That’s something we have to really look at, because something went on with the blankets, I guess.”
The chaotic wet dry race, meant for a short time Hamilton was on course for his first win since Qatar 2021, some 54 races ago, yet he lost out to his quicker team mate in the closing laps for what would have been the third step on the podium.
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The best of times, or the worst of times?
The up and down mood of Hamilton was reflected in his post race comments where despite his best result of the season, Lewis claimed strangely. “It was just over the weekend a really poor performance from myself,” he told Sky F1.
“Some other things came into it yesterday, but mostly myself and today just one of the worst races that I’ve driven. Just lots of mistakes. Of course if I’d qualified better, I would have been in a much better position. So it is what it is. I will go back to the drawing board.”
In many ways Hamilton had his best race of the season, demonstrating his prowess in the wet conditions and was only pipped by George due to the tyre offsets between the pair. It must be difficult having announced pre-season he is leaving the team, for Lewis to not feel a little paranoid, when Russell is in the form of his life, while Lewis can’t help but look to next season at Ferrari.
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A number of the top teams in Formula One have relationships with others further down the grid where some quid pro-quo deal is done for the lesser outfit to blood a junior for the senior team. Ferrari have for years done so with the struggling Sauber and of course Red Bull have their own team which has competed in the guises of Toro Rosso, Alpha Tauri and now the Visa card App Racing Bulls.
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Sore looser is trying to save his image.
In his heart he knows very well the image does not match reality and reality is starting to shine through…
He always has an excuse. George was already outperform him before he decided to leave mercedes
It’s the Lewis Haters Club. Lewis barely ever made mistakes. Had an awful Car for two seasons due to mercedes not listening. The car bouncing up and down.
1st season Russell had 5 safety cars to finish Infront of Lewis
2nd season Lewis finishes way Infront of Russell.
3rd season(this one) Major testing from Lewis early on explains poor qualifying. Lewis was faster in Monaco, poor work from pitstop from mercedes. Canada Lewis faster then everyone, then tires don’t work for qualifying. Proven by the fact he had No grip which explains tire temp issue.
I’ll be interested in the next Races. Where the car is starting to perform.
As for Lewis, destroyed Max in 2021, only to be robbed. Russell starts on pole and sucks hard. Makes mistakes too often and just like Leclerc will never be world champion.
You’ll see.