Last Updated on June 22 2024, 11:48 am

Lewis Hamilton is for many a marmite character. People either love him with a blind passion – the Hamfosi, as we named them here on TJ13 – or maybe there are others who see the seven times world champion as a master of media manipulation. And in the sport of Formula One, understanding how to bend the media to your point of view is a skill learned over many years.

Lewis is not having a good year. He is 8-1 down to team mate George Russell in both qualifying and race finishing positions so far and Hamilton set the tin hat posse into a spin when in Monaco he claimed that he would not beat Russell for the rest of the year in qualifying.

 

 

 

Hamilton stokes sabotage rumours

Some prediction huh? George may well crash into the wall – say in Singapore during qualifying one – and start the Grand Prix in P20, so where will Lewis be then in this scenario?

The reality is that Lewis is just not comfortable with the way the new ground effect F1 cars need to be driven. For eight years from 2014, Mercedes designed a car that suited Hamilton’s driving style which meant he could push to the maximum with little concern the car may break away from underneath him.

Those days are gone and even the upcoming 2026 big regulation change will see the cars utilising significant downforce produced from under the floor of the cars.

Lewis Hamilton is statically the most successful driver in the history of Formula One yet the debate continues to rage whether he really is the greatest of all time. Truly an icon of motorsport and ranked amongst the biggest global celebrities, the seven times F1 champion knows how to promote himself even when results on track are not going particularly well.

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Mercedes boss says Lewis “made himself a victim”

Now the British driver is facing his sternest test of all since joining F1 back in 2007 as he struggles for a third year in a row with the difficult to handle Mercedes W15 car. Yet in F1 there is a measure by which a drivers’ performance can be identified regardless of the capabilities of the car and that is their by comparing their results with their team mate in almost identical machinery.

Now 8-1 behind George Russell in Grand Prix qualifying this season and trailing his team mate by 69-55 points, Hamilton has been grooming the media to explain this apparent loss of his genius racing talent. Early in this season Lewis blamed his deficit to his team mate by making out it was due to his experimentation with setup of the troublesome W15.

If he is to believed, George was going about his business of setting the car up during practice sessions as normal, while Lewis was ‘forced’ to adopt wild experimentations in an attempt to help Mercedes find the silver bullet they were missing.

Yet in an interview with Auto Motor und Sport, Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin claimed these volatile set up changes means Lewis has “made himself a victim a few times” through his experimentation.

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Wild setup changes hurt Mercedes progress

Writing in his daily telegraph column last month, Gary Anderson – former Jordan chief technical director – explained Hamilton’s experiments are hampering the progress of the Mercedes 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,” Anderson explained  from his experience.

“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,” concludes the exF1 engineer.

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Lewis’ history of media manipulation

Of course with Lewis presenting himself as the sacrificial lamb in his efforts to find a big leap in the Mercedes’ car performance, this is in reality a thinly veiled attempt to explain his actual performance deficit to his team mate who has twelve yers less experience in F1.

Hamilton became first famous for playing the victim when in Monaco 2011 he blamed his repeated visits to the stewards on racism. The then McLaren driver had been hauled up in front of the race officials at all but one race that year for his ‘reckless’ driving and crashing into others yet when asked why he was so familiar with the FIA office of judgement, he replied, “maybe its because I is black.”

Of course Lewis was making an attempt at irony, quoting a saying regularly used by British comic Ali G. Yet the subtle notion was placed in the public domain that Lewis on track chaotic actions were being unfairly judged by those with a different skin colour to himself.

Hamilton was criticised by Michael Schumacher’s team mate and now Sky F1 commentator, Martin Brundle, when back in 2016 he refused to take seriously questions over why he was being beaten by team mate Nico Rosberg. Following a defeat by Rosberg at the Japanese Grand Prix, Lewis refused to answer questions launching a live snapchat video during an FIA press conference, where he use the app to put bunny ears, noses whiskers on himself and Carlos Sainz while the global F1 media were forced to look on in amazement.

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Brundle says Hamilton: “Childish and stupid”

At the time Martin Brundle commented: “Instead of focusing on the world championship, he seems to be focusing on an app that puts bunny ears on people. It’s childish and stupid.” Ironically Brundle concluded, “What’s going to be interesting is if it will be a driving force, or is his focus wrong?”

That year the psychological battle which raged between the Mercedes team mates saw Rosberg come out on top and become only the second F1 team mate to defeat Hamilton over the course of a season.

Following Lewis suggestions this year in Monaco that there was a conspiracy against him within the Mercedes team and the result would see him not out qualify Russell for the rest of the season, fellow racer and now IndyNXT race winner Jamie Chadwick called out Hamilton’s “spinning” on a Channel 4 interview with David Coulthard.

“I think he knows what he’s doing,” Chadwick claimed. “He’s spinning it to make it sound like he’s maybe not got the upgrades this weekend which for me, I’m not sure about because a team like Mercedes, they generally always bring upgrades to both cars.”

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Russell: “he’s smashing him” says Chadwick

Her point being in Monaco Mercedes had one new front wing upgrade, which George Russell eventually had fitted to his car, but only after Hamilton declined to run the newly designed component.

“It’s not like they need to split it [regularly] between the two cars,” Chadwick continued, “So yeah, I think he should take his hat off to George. He’s 7-1 on someone like Lewis Hamilton, which is incredible. And I think Lewis is probably not happy about that, to be honest. And that’s where that comment has come from.”

Mercedes later explained they had offered to toss a coin for who would get the upgraded component, but Hamilton had declined fearing if he damaged it during practice under park ferme rules, then replacing it with another of different specification would see Lewis forced to start the Grand Prix from the pit lane.

“He’s on his way out next year,” observed Chadwick, “George is going to be staying in that seat for what they hope is a long time so they need to keep that seat and keep George happy.

“And obviously that might come off the back of maybe Lewis being not so happy but at the same time he’s [George] done an incredible job, he’s smashing him.”

FIA under pressure over Monaco GP

 

 

 

Ferrari boss rubbishes Mercedes sabotage rumours

With now another round of defeats under his belt in Canada, where George Russell scored the first podium of the year for the Mercedes F1 team, Lewis emerged in Barcelona with another controversy surrounding him as an anonymous email was circulated in the paddock claiming Mercedes were now deliberately nobbling Hamilton and favouring Russell.

Such is the intensity of the rabid Hamfosi and their blind support for their hero, its hardly surprising this excuse for his poor performances this season has been floated. While even Lewis isn highly unlikely to be involved in this stunt, it once again highlights the power of the British driver in the F1 media.

Hamilton’s new boss for next season at Ferrari has poured scorn on the allegations stating on Friday in Spain: “How could you imagine that a company with 1500 people working night and day, pushing like hell to bring upgrades… [that] we could kill one of our cars or [deliberately] damage one of our cars?

“This is completely irrational and nobody in the paddock could do something like this. We are fighting for the championship and each weekend we are trying to score points more than the others, how you can imagine that we say, ‘Lewis, we don’t want to score points anymore with him?’

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Newey/Hamilton dream team hopes over

“This, for me, it’s completely irrational and completely out of the scope of the person who is doing my business,” stated the Ferrari boss.

Hamilton has now just 15 races left with his lifelong sponsor Mercedes and given his tally against his team mate this season, the current drought of race wins for the British driver is likely to grow from the current 54 to 69 before he dons the Maranello red overalls.

Having heard the news that Adrian Newey was leaving Red Bull, Lewis made an impassioned plea for the F1 car design guru to join him at Ferrari. This now also looks to be a disappointment for there seven times champion, as the latest paddock talk suggests Newey is close to signing a deal with either Aston Martin or the team where he had his first real F1 success, at Williams.

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Renault/Alpine F1 exit

The British and the French signed an entente cordial way back in 1904 which was designed to improve the historical poor relationship between their people. Yet the spirit of competition between the nations has grown stronger over the years as the Gallic country set out on a project to build a European federation of states.

Eventually the British decided they’d had enough of the top down micro management from Strasbourg and Brussels and in 2016 decided to rid themselves of the technocrats who rule with impunity and manage their own affairs instead. Whether this decision was successful or not has been clouded by a global pandemic and then a cost of living crisis forced upon the world as Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine… READ MORE