Lewis Hamilton is often seen as a driver who is hard to be teammates with. The best example of this came during Briton’s rivalry with his childhood best friend Nico Rosberg.
In the 2022 season, W13 was a car that was difficult to drive for Hamitlon since he had come out of a well-performing car. Russell, on the other hand, had switched to Mercedes from Williams and was more capable of adjusting to the problems of the car.
In doing so, he became his second teammate of Hamilton after Rosberg who succeeded in beating him in the championship standings. He finished the 2022 season at P4 and 35 points ahead of the 7-time world champion.
Going ahead, as Mercedes hope to come back to track with a much better car, there are speculations that Russell and Hamilton might become part of intra-team battles for the champions.
Although, Mercedes’ team principal Toto Wolff vows that he would avoid any conflict between the duo.
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Toto Wolff would not allow any conflict in the team
Speaking to Auto Motor und Sport, Wolff said that he would do everything in his power to avoid any repetition of the Hamilton-Rosberg scenario.
The Austrian explained that a good relationship between teammates also depends on how the team works around them. It gets affected by the conditions that the teams create for their drivers and how the drivers interact with each other.
In that aspect, Wolff believes that his current drivers have immense respect for each other and each other’s talents.
Gym sesh ft. Boss pic.twitter.com/daJCy63fW6
— George Russell (@GeorgeRussell63) January 21, 2023
Wolff compares porpoising to the stock market crash
Mercedes suffered horrible issues of porpoising in their cars in the 2022 season and saw an end to its 8-year of dominance in the sport.
F1 managing director Ross Brawn was also shocked to see that the teams were unprepared for this as it is a consequence of the ground effect aerodynamics.
Mercedes admitted that they knew that there would be some problems but they did not know how big the problem would be. Red Bull’s Adrian Newey was clear about the issue but even he was shocked to see the extent of it.
Drawing on all of that, Wolff said that knowledge is one thing and experiencing is another. He explained that it is not just enough to read a book to know how the stock market crash happened unless one experiences it.
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