At Saturday’s Brazilian Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton was feeling irritated.
When evaluating his Mercedes machinery following an unusually subpar sprint race at the Brazilian Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton was blunt. The British driver called his race “one of the worst of the year” and said his car was “all over the place.”
In Friday’s sprint qualifying session, Hamilton narrowly missed the SQ3 cut-off line, meaning he will start the race on the P11 grid. Regretfully, the seven-time world champion was ranked as low as 14th on the road after getting stacked up at the start of the race.
The Mercedes driver became entangled in a DRS train with Alex Albon’s Williams car at the head, as slower cars passed ahead. After Nico Hulkenberg’s late DNF, Hamilton made some headway and moved up to P11, but he was unable to salvage any points.
“Probably one of the worst of the year,” he said in response to a question about the race from Sky Sports F1. The vehicle was everywhere. The struggle was genuine. This track is not good for our car. If nothing else, we now have some time to make some adjustments before qualifying. There’s no way we can make it worse.”
The Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace’s bounce has been a major problem for Mercedes this weekend, and Hamilton and teammate George Russell are both experiencing severe discomfort in the cockpit due to the repaved tarmac.
Mercedes had to increase the ride height of their car, which inevitably reduces speed, because the W15 was having such a hard time over the uneven surface. Russell made some forceful remarks about the team’s difficulties on Friday.
“That was definitely much more unpleasant in 2022, during the porpoising era, but that was due to the nature of those cars,” he stated. Since you were jumping around every corner and knew it would bite you, it was much more difficult to approach the limit.
The issue with this car right now is that you can think it won’t bite you and complete a really good lap, but all of a sudden, nothing changes or you notice no change the next lap, and you lose all of that performance.
“There is no question that this is the most erratic performance we have seen as a team in probably forever.”
Although Russell was able to maintain a P6 finish in the sprint race, he was unable to compete with the drivers from Ferrari, McLaren, and Red Bull, even for a few laps. He had to look behind him instead, avoiding the danger of Sergio Perez and Pierre Gasly.
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