The long slow divorce between Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes is now about 1/5th complete and as was to be expected, the relationship is beginning to deteriorate in a very public fashion. Hamilton publicly berated the Mercedes technical department early last season claiming they hadn’t ‘listened to him’ and calling for someone to take ownership for this.

Just a few weeks later Mercedes technical director was gone and James Allison back in post but the complaints are still ringing loud and clear. At the second event of the season in Saudi Arabia, when asked about the W15 a despondent Lewis said: “It was similar to previous years.” 

 

 

 

Hamilton woeful season start

“The bouncing we have through turns six, seven, eight, nine and 10, which probably affected George…it’s something they have not been able to fix.”

Now five races in Lewis Hamilton is having his worst ever start to an F1 campaign. With just 19 points on the board, the seven times world champion is languishing down in ninth place in the driver standings while his team mate on 33 points is two places further up the table.

George has out qualified Lewis in six of the last seven Grand Prix full race qualifying sessions and similarly has finished ahead of his decorated team mate in six of the last seven Grand Prix. Now in their third season racing together, Russell has proved a formidable team mate to the former world champion finishing ahead of him in the final driver standings in 2022. 

Hamilton showed some better form in 2023 but improved qualifying results from George saw him level at 11-11 with the once king of the one lap shootout. Now with Lewis on his way to Ferrari next year, George’s star is in the ascendancy with Mercedes as Toto Wolff ponders who to partner him with going forward.

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Lewis is making “excuses”

The problem facing Mercedes is that they are locked in a battle with Aston Martin for P4/P5 and they have an underperforming Lewis Hamilton living out a long farewell. Lewis has been developing a narrative this season, that he is the one doing all the setup experimentation with yet another useless car – something his former engineer said this week looked like a convenient ‘excuse.’

“I don’t want to say the word excuses,” said Marc Priestly who was an engineer at McLaren when Hamilton won his fort championship.

“I don’t want to suggest it’s just giving him excuses to not perform, but to some extent it does do that. It takes a little bit of the pressure off if you are being beaten.”

Lewis came home in P2 during the recent Sprint in Shanghai, but then he claimed to have made BIG setup changes before Grand Prix qualifying, where he crashed out in P18. With Lewis trailing home in P9 in the Chinese Grand Prix, Toto Wolff made his displeasure known laying the responsibility fully on Hamilton’s shoulders for the setup demands.

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Wolff blames Hamilton

“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, “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 comments.

The team at Brackley are clearly closing ranks with Hamilton’s imminent departure playing out as now James Allison in the debrief from China makes it clear there will be no more ‘wild’ setup experimentation.

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Lewis “wished” he’d followed George

“If you make the wrong choices between the sprint part of the weekend and the main event you can end up making the car slower and suffer accordingly and you don’t get any, although you get this opportunity to adjust the car, your first taste of the adjustments you’ve made are in qualifying, in Q1,” Allison says in an online video.

“So if you’ve chosen poorly then you will suffer and the first time you’ll know you’re suffering is when it really counts. I would say, well I don’t need to guess about this because Lewis was absolutely explicit about it afterwards.”

Of course this year the Sprint weekend formats have been altered which now allows for the car setup to be switched between the shortened race form and Grand Prix qualifying now on Saturday afternoon. Last season there would have been no option to change the car following the Friday afternoon track session.

Allison reveals Hamilton “really wished” he’d followed the approach of his team mate George Russell.

Hamilton making “excuses” says his former engineer

 

 

 

Mercedes to control run plans in future

“George fuelled to do two timed laps so that he could have a feel of the car in the first flying lap, do a cool down lap and then have another bite at the cherry which would just give him more of a feel for the car.

“Whereas Lewis went later in the session, one timed lap and Lewis was very clear afterwards that he needed another lap. He’d found that the changes he’d made had made the car more understeery, they’d made it easier for the car to lock up under the braking and he was just pinching those front brakes in a way that was causing him difficulties.”

Allison continues with the emphasis on the setup choices being Hamilton’s call alone, but in an ever so polite fashion makes it clear the team will decide on these matters going forward. 

“So he would hold his hand up and say “my mistake, my error”. I think we 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.”

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Upgrades critical in Miami

With an upgrade to the W15 planned for Miami, Allison knows only a properly prepared run plan during the weekend will deliver the information the team needs to understand how the new components are performing.

“The challenge that we face in the coming races is to try and move both the set up of the car and also the pieces that we bring to the car so that that’s improved,” concludes Allison. So the simple fact of the matter is Mercedes, not Lewis Hamilton, will be driving the Miami weekend run plans which in turn guide the engineers on how to best setup the car.

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Lance Stroll future addressed by Alons

Since being acquired by Lawrence Stroll, Aston Martin have joined the big boys F1 league. The Silverstone based team under previous ownership had cultivated the image of the ‘plucky’ underdog, pulling out surprise results on a budget far below that of the giants of the sport.

Having started life as the Jordan F1 team back in 1991, Aston Martin have been through a number of iterations even having four name changes in the four years between 2005-2008, before finally the team were bought by Indian businessman Vijay Mallya…. READ MORE