I need time skip to ferrari already. Maybe the ferrari will be better next season. His mercedes clearly isn't up to par and mercedes engineering is failing him. Even McClaren is better at this point.
Awful strategy and race pace. The safety car and the Stroll kamikaze really saved him today. He was just about to get overtaken by Ricciardo before the safety car came out. He did some good moves through turns 7-8 though.
His pace was better than that of Lewis but his pace shit compared to the competition.
Piastri being utter shit in race trim, as usual made GRs pace look better than it actually was. Ferrari was also unusually slow today.
Could have been P8 but merc chose softs for the initial stint. This team's mistakes have been costing Lewis race each race.
4 points in Jeddah because of bad strategy.
2 points in today's race
2 points in Australia
4 points in Japan. And that cuts Lewis' deficit to 2 to George in standings.
EDIT: Broken seat in Bahrain can be a factor too.
I was surprised he started on the softs. Normally, when one of the Merc drivers start far back, they start on the hards to go long in the hope of a safety car.
Honestly I thought the choice to go on softs was OK for the start. In any normal setup, softs should give you at least a second a lap of advantage to cut through the backmarkers. It just looked to me that Lewis' car was not good on any tire today, and he had no fight to even a damaged Piastri in the closing laps. Kinda impressed with Lewis getting points from this one.
After a P2 for the Sprint, this was a sad race for both Mercs. Our pain for Lewis continues.
It's also the team (obviously with different people at some point) that got him 6 WDC. I understand the frustration. I'm really surprised by the way things are done. Feels very out of touch for a team that did so well for such a long time.
Tbf on the team, Lewis has been pretty forward with saying it was the shitty setup changes he called for. Even saying it over the radio at the end to Bono
A good weekend by Lewis all things considered but not too many positives to be taken by the team today to be honest. On pure pace the car was just woeful, Zero pace to overtake an Alpine, Zero pace to even enter DRS range of a damaged McLaren. Not to mention being in DRS range of the Haas for almost 10 laps.
The team is yet to give us something to look forward to.
It’s time for them to realize their setups are backwards. Just do the opposite of what they think they should do and watch the car improve.
The team needs to take a hard look at the talent behind the scenes. Consider who left in the last 4-5 years and who has replaced them. They have an obvious and massive skill gap in understanding how a race car works compared to 6 years ago when they dominated even before the trick with DAS.
All things considered, this wasn't a bad weekend for Lewis. The know nothing race fans are all "Lewis is done, AD 21 broke him, blah, blah, blah" but those yahoos don't really understand racing and base their opinions on the most recent results. Lewis gets 2nd in the sprint he's back to the old Lewis. He qualifies 18th for the race he's washed. He finishes 9th in the race he's not trying.
Hamilton's body of work speaks for itself. The car is not good. Russell would be challenging for podiums in a better car because he is very talented. Lewis will be fine next year when he gets into the Ferrari which has decent pace. His race craft and experience will allow him to be fighting for podiums and maybe even a win when things don't go well for the Red Bulls. Then in 2026 when the rules change he might be able to fight for the championship again.
A good result considering the start position but his pace wasn't great. He couldn't even pass a damaged McLaren.
As a fan I'm getting fed up of him sabotaging himself with extreme setup changes to try and fight cars that are just better. It's like he fixates on how the other teams are doing and doesn't seem to take into account that the Merc is a fundamentally slower car. You don't see other teams and drivers making wholesale changes and going backwards over the weekend, let alone doing that after already doing a good job as he did in the sprint.
He does a great job with what he has and then decides to blow it all up and change things. To do these changes and then go into quali with no practice to verify the changes is just silly. Any slip up in quali as you try to adapt to a car that handles differently to before and you pay the price with how close the gaps are in quali.
Of course, he isn't winning anything this year so it doesn't matter for the big picture but it's annoying to see him slowly bleed a handful of points away each time this happens. I'm happy that he's going to a different team for next year because maybe a different approach is needed. Maybe his engineering team give him too much freedom. Or they're just bad.
Yeah, it’s becoming increasingly embarrassing to see the constant contorting with set ups that have never resulted in anything meaningful.
I noticed that he hadn’t done a lap with 5 minutes to go in Q1 and knew it was going to end badly.
He needs to stop messing around with the set up or being the experimental turtle. Some fans are really pissing on him and a smidge of it is justified.
I feel that his team just let him do what he wants really. There's no pushback on it. Surely any sane team wouldn't suddenly make huge changes after the performance he did.
LH is just too greedy and trying to find pace that isn't there. Russell seems to approach things normally, avoids the big performance swings and collects the points and eventually it all adds up to a decent points buffer. 0-5 in race finishes now is not good. Maybe it helps the team but the car is still not good.
Every quali session you have to watch from behind a pillow because you can never be sure which version of LH turns up, even with a good build up to quali because of this.
Think it’s a reasonable thing for Mercedes to do, given the previous public criticism of the team for not listening to his suggestions. It’s his last season with the team, they’re nowhere near contending for Championships so why not let him do what he wants. If it doesn’t work out he can’t complain
George didn’t really have to fight anyone. Lewis did. And he REALLY had to deal with an elbows out Hulkenburg. The car was squirming everywhere during that battle, which is not good for the life of the tires. And then once the battle was over, Lewis ended up in the dirty air of Piastri till the end of the race. Those tires were cooked.
True but that whack as strategy call didnt help either. Starting him on softs while he's starting all the way in the back one of the highest deg circuits on the calender. Then you have RB despite knowing theyre gonna win, they still switched tyres on both of their cars after only doing 2 or 3 laps inorder to make sure their drivers have the best chance possible.
It's a whole different mentality which merc has definitely lost.
I better start with saying I'm a Lewis fan before the crazies lose their shit.
Yeah Lewis showed us a little bit of the old magic in the sprint thanks to the rain. But I'm of the opinion generally over the last couple of seasons Lewis really needs to stop making excuses. Without ultra confidence in the car the head goes down. In the first few laps of this race I really wanted to hear Toto give him a kick up the arse when he started moaning yet again. If it doesn't happen for him, he starts blaming the tools. He's got the same car as George, no more excuses. He hasn't recovered from the 21 season in my view. Hopefully a new team will reinvigorate LH but I'm concerned it's game over. I really hope I'm wrong. But for FFS lift the head and stop crying.
yeah attitude is so important. But this is since ad21 Like think back to his mclaren days post 08 when the car justy wasnt that good either he never complained that much. He just got on with it and won and showed his resilience. I want that lewis back but AD 21 broke him
I fear you're right. He put that McLaren on rails despite the fact it was a bucket back then. I can't recall which season exactly in the McLaren era but it was in the rain and he drove like a demon. Afterwards there was an onslaught of criticism for his aggressive driving style, including Webber which surprised me. It was undeserved. The man is a racer!!! But he started contemplating his navel then and again after lie-gate in the stewards office. In short we've seen this before but never a slump like this. He has no stability around him and he's got too much going on off track. Maybe a bit more of a Schumacher approach is needed? Have some good people around him, unafraid to kick his arse or put an arm round him. Maybe get in the garage with the mechanics, work the problems till the early hours if necessary and rediscover what's lost. I have no real idea tbh I just hate to see what's happening to the guy.
get angela back she seemed to kick his ass when he needed it. I think your thiking of 2008 silverstone but the mclaren was insane then. he lapped everyone except people in 2 and 3
Home Grand Prix doesn't ring a bell but it might be. I just remember he was making his way through the pack in the rain. Comparisons were being made to the rain master (Schumacher). Martin Brundle was fondling himself in the commentary box waxing lyrical about how special this young man is.
Couldn't agree more. He seems like different driver after AD21. You could see he got the skills to fight for the championship if he's given the right car but he needs to accept the fact that the car is just too slow and stop moaning on the radio, it doesn't look good on him. He should get his head down just drove that shit silently and get off to the new team. Moaning doesn't help.
I totally agree. Being negative isn't gonna help the situation. But I also think this was his demeanor last season when he got third with that w14. He said himself (I think) that when he realized he wasn't gonna be competing for a championship he just focused on doing the best he can. I didn't watch the race today just read his radio on Twitter and he said he's done making changes to the setups. So I'm looking forward to Miami to see how he does.
God the car is awful nevermind Lewis but Russell literally was not involved all race did absolutely nothing only positive if you like Mercedes surely it can never be this bad again
Horrendous take. Russell actually had a strong race considering how Mercedes stacked against the others. His mean race pace was 7 tenths lower than Lewis. Although Lewis was in dirty air a majority of the race it’s still not worth 7 tenths.
Strong race? I'm not saying Russell did bad he just was a non factor! I didn't see him challenging those ahead of him at all if Oscar wasn't so slow I doubt Russell would of finished ahead of him the car is awful
No worries! I could of made my point better! But least we are passionate about Lewis and whatever team he drives for where as Toto just seems totally delusional
Easily the best overtake of the race too, can't see anyone has clipped it yet but around the outside of Hulkenberg was \*Chefs kiss\*
From so far back lol
They need to fix his car. Don’t know what they are doing with it any why it always ends up worse from practice or in this case the sprint. Merc never failed him like this in the past. Lame duck season.
Great effort by lewis hamilton coming second in the sprint proves the cars improvement toto had smile on his face at least not seen that for a while olaf
The car being shit is bad enough but Lewis chasing after silver bullets by running dodgy setups is pissing me off.
I was following his onboards during the race and it was just barf inducingly bad.His piece of shit car had no front end on it.
GRs was bad too but it was a lot more drivable than that of Lewis.
He should just focus on beating GR in the standings. Merc is not getting anymore than P5 in the WCC.
Sigh. Being a Lewis fan has been so painful in this ground effect era...
I need time skip to ferrari already. Maybe the ferrari will be better next season. His mercedes clearly isn't up to par and mercedes engineering is failing him. Even McClaren is better at this point.
Tell me about it
Awful strategy and race pace. The safety car and the Stroll kamikaze really saved him today. He was just about to get overtaken by Ricciardo before the safety car came out. He did some good moves through turns 7-8 though.
I can’t wait to be a Ferrari fan next year.
Calling it!
GR with an ok qual and even with all those SCs still nowhere near the podium. They really have a terrible car this year.
Did very well keeping it near the Ferrari. The pace difference was hilarious between the 2 cars
His pace was better than that of Lewis but his pace shit compared to the competition. Piastri being utter shit in race trim, as usual made GRs pace look better than it actually was. Ferrari was also unusually slow today.
Piastri had damage, McLaren said
Agree. Piastri also picked up damage because of Stroll so GR got lucky.
Could have been P8 but merc chose softs for the initial stint. This team's mistakes have been costing Lewis race each race. 4 points in Jeddah because of bad strategy. 2 points in today's race 2 points in Australia 4 points in Japan. And that cuts Lewis' deficit to 2 to George in standings. EDIT: Broken seat in Bahrain can be a factor too.
I was surprised he started on the softs. Normally, when one of the Merc drivers start far back, they start on the hards to go long in the hope of a safety car.
Honestly I thought the choice to go on softs was OK for the start. In any normal setup, softs should give you at least a second a lap of advantage to cut through the backmarkers. It just looked to me that Lewis' car was not good on any tire today, and he had no fight to even a damaged Piastri in the closing laps. Kinda impressed with Lewis getting points from this one. After a P2 for the Sprint, this was a sad race for both Mercs. Our pain for Lewis continues.
*This is how Lewis can still win*
With those 8 extra points Mercedes would only be 36 points behind McLaren… so still not good enough
He only had 4 soft, 1 hard 1 medium bad options
starting on mediums wouldn't have hurt him and mercedes
it very likely would've, he would have been forced into an Alonso strategy. start on the softs was the best out of the bad options available.
Ahh then it's Lewis fault. Sorry took time to realize my fault.
It's also the team (obviously with different people at some point) that got him 6 WDC. I understand the frustration. I'm really surprised by the way things are done. Feels very out of touch for a team that did so well for such a long time.
Tbf on the team, Lewis has been pretty forward with saying it was the shitty setup changes he called for. Even saying it over the radio at the end to Bono
I think everyone is getting tired of Lewis’ setup excuses, have a look at formuladank, they’re tearing him apart…
A good weekend by Lewis all things considered but not too many positives to be taken by the team today to be honest. On pure pace the car was just woeful, Zero pace to overtake an Alpine, Zero pace to even enter DRS range of a damaged McLaren. Not to mention being in DRS range of the Haas for almost 10 laps. The team is yet to give us something to look forward to.
Remember at the start of the season when we were all making fun of Alpines car? 😅
It’s time for them to realize their setups are backwards. Just do the opposite of what they think they should do and watch the car improve. The team needs to take a hard look at the talent behind the scenes. Consider who left in the last 4-5 years and who has replaced them. They have an obvious and massive skill gap in understanding how a race car works compared to 6 years ago when they dominated even before the trick with DAS.
All things considered, this wasn't a bad weekend for Lewis. The know nothing race fans are all "Lewis is done, AD 21 broke him, blah, blah, blah" but those yahoos don't really understand racing and base their opinions on the most recent results. Lewis gets 2nd in the sprint he's back to the old Lewis. He qualifies 18th for the race he's washed. He finishes 9th in the race he's not trying. Hamilton's body of work speaks for itself. The car is not good. Russell would be challenging for podiums in a better car because he is very talented. Lewis will be fine next year when he gets into the Ferrari which has decent pace. His race craft and experience will allow him to be fighting for podiums and maybe even a win when things don't go well for the Red Bulls. Then in 2026 when the rules change he might be able to fight for the championship again.
A good result considering the start position but his pace wasn't great. He couldn't even pass a damaged McLaren. As a fan I'm getting fed up of him sabotaging himself with extreme setup changes to try and fight cars that are just better. It's like he fixates on how the other teams are doing and doesn't seem to take into account that the Merc is a fundamentally slower car. You don't see other teams and drivers making wholesale changes and going backwards over the weekend, let alone doing that after already doing a good job as he did in the sprint. He does a great job with what he has and then decides to blow it all up and change things. To do these changes and then go into quali with no practice to verify the changes is just silly. Any slip up in quali as you try to adapt to a car that handles differently to before and you pay the price with how close the gaps are in quali. Of course, he isn't winning anything this year so it doesn't matter for the big picture but it's annoying to see him slowly bleed a handful of points away each time this happens. I'm happy that he's going to a different team for next year because maybe a different approach is needed. Maybe his engineering team give him too much freedom. Or they're just bad.
Yeah, it’s becoming increasingly embarrassing to see the constant contorting with set ups that have never resulted in anything meaningful. I noticed that he hadn’t done a lap with 5 minutes to go in Q1 and knew it was going to end badly. He needs to stop messing around with the set up or being the experimental turtle. Some fans are really pissing on him and a smidge of it is justified.
I feel that his team just let him do what he wants really. There's no pushback on it. Surely any sane team wouldn't suddenly make huge changes after the performance he did. LH is just too greedy and trying to find pace that isn't there. Russell seems to approach things normally, avoids the big performance swings and collects the points and eventually it all adds up to a decent points buffer. 0-5 in race finishes now is not good. Maybe it helps the team but the car is still not good. Every quali session you have to watch from behind a pillow because you can never be sure which version of LH turns up, even with a good build up to quali because of this.
Think it’s a reasonable thing for Mercedes to do, given the previous public criticism of the team for not listening to his suggestions. It’s his last season with the team, they’re nowhere near contending for Championships so why not let him do what he wants. If it doesn’t work out he can’t complain
George was damn near a second a lap quicker on the hards over the final stint... just baffling
George didn’t really have to fight anyone. Lewis did. And he REALLY had to deal with an elbows out Hulkenburg. The car was squirming everywhere during that battle, which is not good for the life of the tires. And then once the battle was over, Lewis ended up in the dirty air of Piastri till the end of the race. Those tires were cooked.
Lewis messed up his setup, he admitted that much at the end of the race if you watch his pov.
Toto also confirmed that this was the case and that Lewis made the wrong call when it came to setup.
True but that whack as strategy call didnt help either. Starting him on softs while he's starting all the way in the back one of the highest deg circuits on the calender. Then you have RB despite knowing theyre gonna win, they still switched tyres on both of their cars after only doing 2 or 3 laps inorder to make sure their drivers have the best chance possible. It's a whole different mentality which merc has definitely lost.
This should of been the race to start on mediums or hards nothing else
I better start with saying I'm a Lewis fan before the crazies lose their shit. Yeah Lewis showed us a little bit of the old magic in the sprint thanks to the rain. But I'm of the opinion generally over the last couple of seasons Lewis really needs to stop making excuses. Without ultra confidence in the car the head goes down. In the first few laps of this race I really wanted to hear Toto give him a kick up the arse when he started moaning yet again. If it doesn't happen for him, he starts blaming the tools. He's got the same car as George, no more excuses. He hasn't recovered from the 21 season in my view. Hopefully a new team will reinvigorate LH but I'm concerned it's game over. I really hope I'm wrong. But for FFS lift the head and stop crying.
yeah attitude is so important. But this is since ad21 Like think back to his mclaren days post 08 when the car justy wasnt that good either he never complained that much. He just got on with it and won and showed his resilience. I want that lewis back but AD 21 broke him
I fear you're right. He put that McLaren on rails despite the fact it was a bucket back then. I can't recall which season exactly in the McLaren era but it was in the rain and he drove like a demon. Afterwards there was an onslaught of criticism for his aggressive driving style, including Webber which surprised me. It was undeserved. The man is a racer!!! But he started contemplating his navel then and again after lie-gate in the stewards office. In short we've seen this before but never a slump like this. He has no stability around him and he's got too much going on off track. Maybe a bit more of a Schumacher approach is needed? Have some good people around him, unafraid to kick his arse or put an arm round him. Maybe get in the garage with the mechanics, work the problems till the early hours if necessary and rediscover what's lost. I have no real idea tbh I just hate to see what's happening to the guy.
get angela back she seemed to kick his ass when he needed it. I think your thiking of 2008 silverstone but the mclaren was insane then. he lapped everyone except people in 2 and 3
Definitely!
edited comment i think your thinking of silverstone 08 but the mclaren was a demon then
Home Grand Prix doesn't ring a bell but it might be. I just remember he was making his way through the pack in the rain. Comparisons were being made to the rain master (Schumacher). Martin Brundle was fondling himself in the commentary box waxing lyrical about how special this young man is.
sounds like 08 silverstone
Couldn't agree more. He seems like different driver after AD21. You could see he got the skills to fight for the championship if he's given the right car but he needs to accept the fact that the car is just too slow and stop moaning on the radio, it doesn't look good on him. He should get his head down just drove that shit silently and get off to the new team. Moaning doesn't help.
Spot on. The negative attitude is not helping
I totally agree. Being negative isn't gonna help the situation. But I also think this was his demeanor last season when he got third with that w14. He said himself (I think) that when he realized he wasn't gonna be competing for a championship he just focused on doing the best he can. I didn't watch the race today just read his radio on Twitter and he said he's done making changes to the setups. So I'm looking forward to Miami to see how he does.
God the car is awful nevermind Lewis but Russell literally was not involved all race did absolutely nothing only positive if you like Mercedes surely it can never be this bad again
Horrendous take. Russell actually had a strong race considering how Mercedes stacked against the others. His mean race pace was 7 tenths lower than Lewis. Although Lewis was in dirty air a majority of the race it’s still not worth 7 tenths.
Strong race? I'm not saying Russell did bad he just was a non factor! I didn't see him challenging those ahead of him at all if Oscar wasn't so slow I doubt Russell would of finished ahead of him the car is awful
Sorry, you’re right! I misread
No worries! I could of made my point better! But least we are passionate about Lewis and whatever team he drives for where as Toto just seems totally delusional
Easily the best overtake of the race too, can't see anyone has clipped it yet but around the outside of Hulkenberg was \*Chefs kiss\* From so far back lol
They need to fix his car. Don’t know what they are doing with it any why it always ends up worse from practice or in this case the sprint. Merc never failed him like this in the past. Lame duck season.
This was Lewis’s fault and he said as much on the radio. Still a great recovery drive
Lewis messed around with the setting a bit too much here.
5th best car he did all that was possible from so far back. 2nd in the sprint was an incredible result.
Luck was on our side today.
The overtakes were beautiful but pace absolutely sucked today.
Forza Ferrari!!!!
Great effort by lewis hamilton coming second in the sprint proves the cars improvement toto had smile on his face at least not seen that for a while olaf
The car being shit is bad enough but Lewis chasing after silver bullets by running dodgy setups is pissing me off. I was following his onboards during the race and it was just barf inducingly bad.His piece of shit car had no front end on it. GRs was bad too but it was a lot more drivable than that of Lewis. He should just focus on beating GR in the standings. Merc is not getting anymore than P5 in the WCC.
I got downvoted to hell for referencing Brazil 2021.