In football land, one of the greatest managers ever seen at Anfield has just three races remaining before he departs his nine year tenure at the club. Jurgen Klopp is off for pastures new having revived the fortunes of a once superpower of English football. Meanwhile in Formula One land another divorce is underway breaking the 12 year relationship between Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes AMG F1 team.

In Liverpool there is no animosity about their manager deciding its time to go but matters are turning sour in Brackley as Hamilton continues his global farewell tour. Lewis has developed a narrative this season which portrays him having to make wild setup changes to try and find the troublesome W15’s sweet spot.

 

 

 

Wolff surprised at Hamilton good mood

The less vocal George Russell is meanwhile cracking on with the tools Mercedes has provided him with, out qualifying his team mate. In the last seven Grand Prix qualifying sessions, Russell has triumphed over the once maestro of the one lap in all Grand Prix qualifying this year, with the exception of Japan 2024.

The young British driver is also beating his team mate in the scoring stakes as after five races this year Russell has chalked up 33 points to Hamilton’s 19. A dejected Lewis Hamilton even offered to allow his team mate past in the recent race in Japan, something the once dominant racing driver would have fought at all cost.

In the Brackley debrief following the Chinese Grand Prix, the team’s technical director – James Allison – not so subtlety suggested that the team in future will make the decisions on Hamilton’s run plans and car setup choices.

Toto Wolff was direct too, blaming Hamilton for making wild setup changes and mocking the good mood of his once star driver who qualified in P18 and finished in a disappointing P9. “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.

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Hamilton “making excuses”

Hamilton’s former engineer at McLaren, Marc Priestly, has now suggested the wild setup changes Hamilton is making from weekend to weekend is merely an “excuse” for his inability to get to grips with the car – a la his team mate.

Now former F1 tech guru Gary Anderson is having his say on the Hamilton/Mercedes debacle. “There might be something in Hamilton chasing the few times that Mercedes have found their sweet spot in the last few years,” he writes in his Telegraph column. Anderson believes Lewis is merely burying his head in the sand and refusing to accept the reality the Silver Arrows find themselves in.

“It has been there on occasion – two poles and one win since the end of 2021 – but has been fleeting. The Mercedes is generally inconsistent. This is all likely leading him astray and Hamilton does not seem willing to accept the reality.”

One of the wins and pole was of course from a stella performance from George Russell in the 2022 Brazilian Grand Prix. Hamilton on the other hand is winless since his last victory in the 2021 Qatar Grand Prix, which set up the big season finale in Abu Dhabi with Max Verstappen.

Verstappen’s latest swipe at Hamilton

 

 

 

Car development hampered by Lewis’ tinkering

Anderson questions the effect of Hamilton’s behaviour on the medium term future of the team. “There is a knock-on effect that hampers the car’s development long-term, too. If you make odd choices on set-up then a team fails to find a baseline for performance and setup. It limits learning about the car. If that is absent then the development path, knowing what to work on in the wind tunnel and improving aerodynamic performance, will be confused too.

“It leaves a team with no positive direction. This continues to be a recurring headache for Hamilton but he has at least an end date as he departs for Ferrari. In the meantime if he does not want to end the year as the second-best Mercedes driver he should look and learn from Russell and simply take the best out of what he has to work with,” Anderson concludes.

Last time out in China, Mercedes decided on George Russell’s run plan and his overall approach to Grand Prix qualifying. George was fuelled for two timed laps with a cool down lap in between. Hamilton took it upon himself to go in na different direction.

“Lewis went later in the session,” revealed Allison. “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 under steery, 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.”

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Team to control Hamilton setup decisions in future

In Q1 Hamilton had a huge lockup at the hairpin in Shanghai, costing him around half a second and the result was an early exit from qualifying and a poor start position of P18.

In his ever so polite manner, Allison reviewed these decisions stating: “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.”

Put simply this means in future, Mercedes will decide on Hamilton’s run plan and car setup, which will be much closer to the configuration they decide upon for George. And this all begs the question why when moving teams an engineer is placed on garden leave, yet a driver going to a rival is allowed to race for one more season.

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Newey breaks silence on “leaving Red Bull

Adrian Newey speaks about leaving Red Bull. This week the German media outlet AMuS reported they had sources at Red Bull who confirmed Adrian Newey will be leaving the Red Bull Racing F1 team. This was picked up by the British media with Mark Hughes writing a speculative piece which assumed the guru designer would be moving teams, yet there was not a single quotable source to confirm this.

Adrian Newey is in his 20th season with RBR and was there at the start of the project as the ruins of the Ford backed Jaguar outfit was bought out. The team has come far in that time, first being considered by the rest as a joke, an upstart, the party team and now sits with thirteen world championship’s adorning the trophy cabinet… READ MORE