Lewis Hamilton and Toto Wolff have spoken in depth on whether they feel Mercedes can provide an updated car good enough to challenge for this season’s championship.
The seven-time F1 world champion Hamilton trails teammate George Russell by 21 points, with the Brit also the only driver to have finished in the top five at every Grand Prix so far in this 2022 season. Championship leader Charles Leclerc is currently 58 points in front of Hamilton while Ferrari (in P1) sits 47 points away from Mercedes in P3 in the constructor’s championship.
Hamilton finished a disappointing Sprint weekend in Imola for the Mercedes team in P13, having been lapped by reigning champion and arch rival of last year, Max Verstappen. Russell meanwhile crossed the line in P4, having made a good start, taken advantage of a collision between Carlos Sainz, Daniel Ricciardo and Valtteri Bottas and pushed to overcome the deficit of incorrectly adjusted front wing flaps after his pit stop.
Former McLaren driver Hamilton discussed comparisons to his “worst car” in Formula 1, the toll bad results have on the team, the likelihood of a solution materialising and how far the Mercedes team really are behind the leaders after the first four races of the year left him P7 in the driver’s standings.
CEO and Team Principal of the Mercedes team, Wolff, makes it clear that it is “obvious” that Mercedes are not in the fight for the 2022 championships, but asserts that the team have a “direction” they are headed in understanding the car, whilst acknowledging what it would take to “cut your losses” on this year’s design.
Hamilton –
Subject of comparing 2022 to his 2009 season at McLaren:
“There are people that say I’ve never had a bad car, and I can assure you I have. The 2009 car was very far off and was the worst car that I’ve had. This car currently is not far off that experience but I think has a lot of potential, as did that [2009] car. We fixed it eventually and got back in the game, and I have the utmost faith in my team to do that again here. I think it just goes back again because it’s initially frustrating because you see those people pulling away and you want to be in that fight.
“But when you’re struggling to even get in the top 10, the sooner you can accept the reality you’re faced with, the sooner you can move that negative energy onto a positive effort and that’s supporting the aerodynamicists and the people working back at the factory who are really feeling the brunt of the weight of these results we’re getting at the moment, but they’re doing everything they can. Everyone at the track is trying to work their hardest but doesn’t seem to be getting the results that we want or deserve, but these things are sent to try us and this will only make us stronger, as painful as it’s going to be.”
Subject of how different 2009’s situation inside the team is to this time around:
“The scenario in 2009 was I was in my third year in this sport, it was a brand new era of car, and I remember coming back in February, or January, to the team, and I remember the head aerodynamicists and team’s guys at the top were like, ‘Oh, we’ve already hit our target.’ The new rules said that we would have 50% less downforce in 2009, so they designed the car to have 50%, less downforce.
“And I remember in February we were like, ‘Oh we’ve already hit our target.’ And I was like, ‘That doesn’t sound right…’ But I didn’t have the experience at the time and then obviously we got to the first test and we realised that others had almost as much downforce as the previous year. And they were like, ‘Oh shoot, we’ve got to work to regain that.’ And the ultimate unlocker of that was a double diffuser and we got there.
“This one’s different because the team were not like, ‘Oh we’ve already hit our goal,’ we didn’t know what the goal would be. They’ve been super innovative with the design and our wind tunnel was telling us that we had really good downforce and unfortunately we were on track and there is no bouncing for example in the wind tunnel, and we came across this phenomenon that it is a lot harder to fix than we could have ever imagined. But as I said, what doesn’t kill us will only make us stronger and we will find a solution one way or the other.”
Subject of whether the 2022 championship is out of reach:
“I know there is a lot of points to get and theoretically yes it is still possible [to fight for the title], but one has to be realistic and the problems we have are not small. The car, in terms of how it drives, the issues we have and the way it behaves – these guys are over a second ahead as a worse case scenario. If we happen to fix this in the next race, which we don’t currently have anything coming to fix it in the next race which we don’t have a solution just yet, even to redesign something if we do find a solution and we have to change it, the team will work as hard as they can but things can take months in design and getting those things built.
“So I think we will keep our heads down, we remain hopeful, we continue to chase but have to keep an eye on the realistic position we’re in and we’ve got to work hard to make sure we’re not in this position next year. I’ve never been this far down, we know how these championships work and with those two teams at the front, Ferraris and Red Bulls who are punching out serious performance, we’ve got to find a second and a half at least soon to be ahead and finish ahead of them for the rest of the year basically. That’s not going to be easy.”
Toto Wolff –
Subject of whether Mercedes are out of the championship:
“We are four races in and probably today marks the low of these first four races. And it’s obvious that we are not anywhere near the fight at the front. And it would be pretty unrealistic to claim to have a slot among the front runners for fighting for the championship.”
Subject of keeping frustration under control:
“I think you have to acknowledge that you have a degree of frustration, rather than trying to either paint yourself a too optimistic picture and set the right expectations. And I tell you, that’s not an easy endeavour. And it has nothing to do with the past. Because the eight victories are at that moment of no importance at all. But it’s simply the fact where we are at the moment and we need to understand.
I think we have a direction, where we know how we can unlock the potential that is within the car that would bring us much, much closer. But at the moment, we haven’t got the key. And therefore you just need to grind away and you just need to continue to rely on the science and physics before spiralling into some kind of negative momentum which we are not.”
Here’s George Russell, Valtteri Bottas on their battle
Here’s Toto Wolff on radio to Lewis Hamilton