Lewis Hamilton is currently going through the toughest phase of his career. He once enjoyed the pinnacle of success with consistent race wins, pole positions, podiums, and championships. But in the last few years, that has only come down to Q2 eliminations, lowly points finishes, and rare podiums. Liam Lawson, during the latest Sky Sports F1 podcast episode, revealed the reason behind this and blamed nothing but the Mercedes cars for the debacle.
Speaking on this, Lawson said, “If you look at Lewis for example, who’s obviously not 100% happy, and hasn’t been with that car. You can imagine that every time he approaches the start of a qualifying lap or any lap really, he’s not gonna be 100% confident with what he’s got underneath him and know exactly what it’s gonna do.”
Hamilton has 103 wins and 104 pole positions under his belt. He is statistically the greatest F1 driver ever, but that hasn’t been reflected in his performances since 2021. In the last two seasons, the British driver only managed to grab a pole position. Whereas the 39-year-old, unfortunately, could not win any race in the last 47 outings.
His last race win arrived back in 2021 when he won the inaugural Saudi Arabian Grand Prix in Jeddah. Apart from this, the former McLaren driver has only got 15 podiums in the new ground effect era. Whereas prior to 2022, he amassed a staggering 182 podiums, the most in the sport.
The Mercedes challengers faced multiple issues every year. The W13 in 2022 was plagued by porpoising, which hampered their performances to a great extent. In 2023, there was a rear stability issue, which made it hard for drivers to extract optimum lap times. Even after multiple complaints by Hamilton, Mercedes took ample time to get the better of it.
Besides this, Hamilton was far from liking the unique strategy of the team in the 2024 Saudi Arabian GP. When most cars went for the pit stop in the Safety Car window, Mercedes kept Hamilton away to check if he could make amends and keep hold of his position.
This, unfortunately, backfired and in the end, the #44 driver finished the race in P9, a place behind his starting position. McLaren also tried this with Lando Norris but failed as well.
How is Mercedes still facing problems?
The main reason for Lewis Hamilton’s downfall, as already mentioned by Lawson was the car. The Mercedes W-13, W-14, or the recent W-15 are nowhere near the mighty Red Bull challengers. Despite trying to make improvements year after year, they have fallen short every single time.
Toto Wolff, the team principal has recently opened up on the struggles W-15 is facing despite making significant upgrades in the winter break. According to him, the new car is relatively slow in the high-speed corners. The engineers at Brackley noticed this when they realized the stark difference between the simulation data and on-track performances.
Speaking about this, Wolff said to Motorsport, “There is something which we don’t understand. We are quick everywhere else pretty much. We know that we have a smaller rear wing, we’re compensating what we’re losing through the corners. But it’s just at high speed where we’re losing all the lap time.”
Apart from this, the Silver Arrows are also suffering from their poor straight-line speed, that too being in the third year of the regulations. This brings one to the conclusion that Toto Wolff’s brigade has ample to improve in the coming months if he wants his drivers to win a race this season.
