“Let’s hope he’s right”– Christian Horner on Lewis Hamilton’s rant in hopelessness

“Let’s hope he’s right”– Christian Horner hopes that Mercedes’ woes in Azerbaijan come true as he fancies extending his lead in the championship.

Mercedes is honestly not having a good weekend in Azerbaijan so far, with all three free practice sessions indicated W12’s struggles in yet another street circuit.

During the FP2, Lewis Hamilton was caught instructing his team to do something with the car, as he couldn’t go any faster and was still clocking less time than Red Bull and Ferrari.

“Do whatever we need to do; I’m not going to go any faster. I don’t know where all the time is,” Hamilton on his team radio. When Christian Horner got to know about this, he only prayed that Mercedes’ problems continue.

“Let’s hope he’s right. I haven’t followed what they’ve said. Their long-run pace with Hamilton looked decent but short run they didn’t look at their strongest. Whether they’ve got a bit more in hand I don’t know,” said Horner.

But Horner is not getting over-confident about Mercedes’ situation and is still wary of their situation by predicting that the Brackley based team can still figure its way out.

“It was surprising to see them not up there in the times but I’m sure they will work it out.”

Flexi wing situation is exaggerated.

Mercedes was strictly against Red Bull stepping in Baku with its Flexi wings, but the Milton-Keynes based team consider it as a legal car and decided to go on. Now, Horner claims that Mercedes is exaggerating the advantage from the wings.

“It’s overstated,” he said. “Half-a-second is being quoted, but you could see our rear wing was arguably flexing less than the Mercedes rear wing so it certainly wasn’t half-a-second of lap time delta.”

Horner and Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko have also pointed out the flexibility issue of Mercedes at the front wing, meaning Mercedes could itself find itself in a mess if the controversy continues.

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

Read More