Lewis Hamilton is currently enduring the worst season of his Formula One career. He currently sits down in seventh place in the drivers’ championship now two points behind his team mate, George Russell.

The seven times world champion, once the master of the one lap qualifying has endured a miserable year as his team mate has out qualified him 17-9 across both Sprint and Grand Prix events. Russell too suffered a 32 point swing to Lewis when at the Belgium Grand Prix he was disqualified for his car being underweight in post race scrutineering.

With just three race weekends remaining before the season reaches its conclusion should Hamilton finish behind Russell it will be the first time in his career he has been beaten by a team mate over the course of their partnership. Signs of decline are starting to appear and Ferrari must wonder just what they have let themselves in for.

 

 

 

Mercedes lined Hamilton up for exit

Hamilton shrewdly spotted the lack of commitment from Mercedes going forward when the team refused to offer him more than a guaranteed one year extension to his contract in the autumn of 2023. He activated the clause to exempt him from the ‘plus one year’ once it became clear Ferrari would offer him a multi-year deal.

Lewis is set to remain in Formula One until at least the 2026 season where the biggest regulation changes F1 has ever seen will be introduced by the FIA. Hamilton has struggled with the new ground effect cars introduced in 2022 and the bad news for the seven times world champion is that ground effect is here to stay as the sport’s governing body continues in its attempts to regulate for car design which allows the cars to follow each other more closely.

Ground effect cars were introduced into Formula One in 1978 but at the time circuit safety was worse than questionable and the technology in its early development saw the cars regularly break away from their underfloor provided downforce, causing the driver to career out of control into the barriers.

Before being banned for the 1983 season, the ground effect cars operated best with the driver sitting forward over the front axle of the car and even then the phenomena of “porpoising” was very much evident. This optimal driver position is something Lewis Hamilton complained about repeatedly during the previous two seasons claiming the engineers at Mercedes were not listening to him on the matter.

Ferrari wanted Schumacher

 

 

 

Ground effect cars a different concept

Red Bull Racing have been the dominant force since the ground effect cars were introduced in 2022, winning both DF1 championships over the past couple of seasons. This year its unlikely they will close the gap to Mercedes eight constructor titles, although Max Verstappen looks set to claim his forth consecutive world title next time out in Las Vegas.

It was entirely predictable the team from Milton Keynes would ace the return for ground effect F1 car designs given their guru designer Adrian Newey cut his teeth in F1 during that brief first era with spells at March/Leighton House and Williams F1.

Yet Newey admitted he restricted himself to designs related to the front end of the car and the suspension, leaving the rest to Pierre Wache and the team. For two seasons the ride of the RB18/19 was its strength but this year it has proven to be its downfall on circuits which are bumpy or where the kerb heights are bigger than usual.

With Newey departing for Aston Martin the task of redesigning the suspension falls to Wache and the team given this aspect of an F1 car design is now is intrinsic to the performance of the car and not subservient to aerodynamics anymore.

Wolff had the chance to persuade Hamilton to stay

 

 

 

Older drivers struggling

Hamilton appears to have suffered more than most with the new F1 car designs, but with Fernando Alonso being the exception, a number of F1’s senior drivers have found themselves in the same boat. Daniel Ricciardo has driven the McLaren and V-CARB ground effect cars and for now is out of the sport and probably retired.

Sergio Perez too is uncomfortable with the balance of the new cars and is this year set to be the worst of the drivers from the top four teams.

With just Sergio Perez from the top four below him in the championship, Lewis will have suffered his worst season in eighteen years of Formula One racing come Abu Dhabi and now the once face of British motoring and now TV celebrity, Jeremy Clarkson, has launched an attack on the nations best ever F1 driver suggesting he is over the hill and his move to Ferrari will be an abject disaster.

In his column for the Sun, Clarkson reviews the epic if not fraught Sao Paulo Grand Prix. He starts with a pop at Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll who on the formation lap took to an asphalt run off area and then appeared to spin up the wheels of his car, driving it into the gravel where it became beached.

Wolff reveals details of Hamilton departure

 

 

 

Clarkson SLAMS Hamilton

“We learned two important things during last weekend’s Grand Prix in Brazil,” wrote Clarkson. “Well, three, if you count Lance Stroll, who crashed his freshly repaired car on the formation lap. And then drove it into a gravel tap.

“First of all, Max Verstappen is one of the all-time greats. He may even be the greatest driver we’ve ever seen.

“And second, Lewis Hamilton is past his prime. He blamed his car for his tail-end qualifying session but his team mate, George Russell, was on the front row.”

In his accomplished and irreverent style Clarkson muses that with Hamilton moving to Ferrari that maybe his Mercedes team are sabotaging his car by “filling his fuel tank with lemon barley water instead of petrol. But that seems unlikely.

“It’s far more probable that he’s now too old,” the veteran motoring journalist concludes.

Its difficult to see how Lewis’ Ferrari adventure ends well and memories of Nigel Mansell outstaying his time in F1 with a final fling signing for the Scuderia spring to mind. Hamilton has been at the pinnacle of the sport for more than a decade, but clearly the time has come for him to hand over to the younger generation.

Hamilton’s emotional words about Schumacher

 

 

 

Perez outperforms Tsunoda and Lawson in RBR private test

Lewis Hamilton is heading to Ferrari land next season and whilst he along with Sergio Perez are the worst performers from the top four teams this year, Hamilton has excelled when it comes to keeping his car out of the barriers.

The F1 “distructor” website has the seven times champion in the bottom four when it comes to F1 car repair bills costing Mercedes a mere $320,000 over the course of the season. Pierre Gasly is Alpine’s star driver of the year in this respect with his repair bill across twenty one race weekends being exactly zero for the French F1 outfit.

Sergio Perez who will cost Red Bull the highly prized constructors’ championship this season comes at another cost to the world champion team, with his annual repair bill approaching $5m…. READ MORE