Lewis Hamilton’s current mental fragility was exposed for all to see as he crossed the finish line in Imola. In an attempt to keep his driver’s chin up, Toto Wolff apologised to the former world champion for giving him such a poor car.
Yet a lap ahead George Russell had cruised to P4 after making up places at the start.
Maybe Toto thinks F1 fans don’t realise both his drivers are driving the same Mercedes.
Clearly Lewis Hamilton is not the driver he once was with just over half the points (28) of his teammate (49) after the first 4 race weekends of the season.
Wolff may have thought he was covering up for Hamilton’s poor performance finishing only P13. Yet by making such a public and clearly untrue claim about the “poor car” clearly indicates Lewis is not in the right place mentally to cope with being beaten regularly by his fellow British team mate.
Earlier in the weekend, Hamilton had admitted to Sky F1 he was already “out of the title race” and climbed out of his car during qualifying with about 25% of Q2 remaining.
Mercedes lead driver, George Russell, is the only driver to finish in the top 5 in each GP this season.
It’s blamed to the team. The car was in ‘wet’ setup in stead of dry. True or not..as always they try to shield LH. And a 7x wc not capable of passing an alfatauri for 40 laps?? And the team nor LH himself thought of boxing to break that deadlock situation? What a mess.
The cars are in parc ferme ffrom Friday after quali on a sprint weekend. So the wet/dry setup excuse appears bollocks
In that case it proves again that a Hamilton without the best car…. Mediocre.
O Lordy ! The Judge 13, you’re such a poor one, and you exude so much vitriol and hatred I wonder why you would even be given space to run any form of journalism.
By that comment from Toto, he was saying to Lewis, we’re sorry for constantly using you as team Gunea-pig for testing set-ups and prospective ideas on getting the car right as he, not GR would give them best interpretations and feedback.
In fact, that’s what the argy-bargy between ToTo and Lewis was about as Lewis got angry he was being made to look bad before the viewing public.
They never apologized to Bottas when they used him as Guinea pig for testing engines in 2021…
So the car makes him look bad??? Well all those world titles must have been the car making him look good!!! Can’t have it each way. Bottom line is he has about half the points of his team mate in the same car after 4 races, was 0.4s slower than his team mate in qualifying….. what more can I say
Well not necessarily look at Carlos, he got the top4 car and yet no points. It’s a pair driver + car.
Steve if anyone is good at nagging about the onboard radio it is lewis.
He has almost made a sport of “complaining” about everything….
There are also plenty of experts who don’t refer to Lewis as GOAT. And the doubts about calling him GOAT are mainly in the extreme dominance of Mercedes over the past 8 years.
I honestly don’t understand the speed difference between lewis and russel. I can now only explain that russel is used to getting the most out of a worse car. Lewis has had a car for the past 8 years that did exactly what he wanted. I therefore assume that Lewis can turn it around this year and come back further up the front of the grid.
Yes Dre. Exactly. Remember when Ferrari was superstrong in 2019? Their engine was so strong that no one noticed that their aero was rubbish. When that engine was taken away, it came to light. Same with LH. Merc was so strong nobody could see how good or bad the drivers actually were. Positive thinking is that LH lost the skill handling a bad car. Negative thinking is LH never had skills. Truth will be somewhere in the middle.
Seeing the closeups of Hamilton’s car I was surprised he could drive it with the amount of porpoising. I’m surprised someone can trust that car. Don’t know whether Russel drove with the same setup, but some drivers might be OK with that behavior in the car.
The problem for Lewis is he is driven significantly by emotion. When he feels good he’s a great driver but he must feel at present like the sky has fallen in – and that will be difficult for him to come back from. And if the mental aspect is 10%, of performance, that’s him losing week in week out to your team mate by half a second.
Leave Lewis alone. He is and he will always be seven times world champion whoever wrote this article should be totally and utterly ashamed of themselves. Or perhaps it’s because he’s a black man on within a sport that is predominantly white. Whatever Lewis does now or in the future his accomplishments will always be there.
Leave the man alone no one is perfect there are issues with this car.
“Leave Lewis alone. He is and he will always be seven times world champion”
Will always be? Do you know something we don’t?
Aha. The usual hurled accusation of racism if you criticise a none white person. That also has been cultivated by Hamilton. But we’ll forgive him that given he came from Stevenage – had no money – and white man Ron Dennis began sponsoring his karting age 12 to the tune of £100k a year.
He’s a 6 times champion racing his team mate, because the disgraceful FIA under Jean Todt allowed Mercedes to veto the regular rule changes that have stopped this level of 1 team domination since F1 began in 1950.
Even Schumacher had significant rule changes during his run of 5 titles at Ferrari.
Clearly if one Mercedes is P4 and the other P14(13 after Ocon penalty) and the team boss blames the car – he is trying to support the driver who was nowhere despite having the same mechanical machinaery as the one just outside the podium
Sorry but everything being said here is true. LH is coming off like a big child. Never happy unless he looks good. Look at what happened after his loss in last years closing race in UAE. He lost a race fair and square and spent the whole winter break sulking. Now he’s losing and losing badly and he’s throwing his toys out of his pram so much the toto is blaming the car so his feelings won’t get hurt. Screw that he needs to learn to get the hell over it. I know his achievements will always be there (sadly) but he needs to man the hell up and just admit that he can’t do it anymore. His teammate has the same car and he is head and shoulders above him
After watching in horror, I reckon Hill, Jackie etc will make public announcement soon to take their words back saying his not the GOAT anymore…
Steve you again miss the whole point of what I’m trying to make clear.
1. You continuously indicate that MV is nagging on the radio. LH does this too and in my opinion even more than MV.
2. He has only been able to achieve these stats through a very dominant Mercedes. that’s also where the doubt is to call him GOAT
3. When LH suffers so much from his emotional state and cannot perform as a result. Then I have even more doubts about the statement that he is GOAT. As a GOAT you have to be able to perform under all circumstances in my eyes.
3a And have the mental resilience to handle bad times.
Maybe lower case goat