Imola (dpa) – He wanted revenge for the supposedly stolen world title last year.
He wanted to become the sole record world champion in Formula 1 with his eighth triumph and overtake Michael Schumacher. This year he wanted to add many more to his 103 victories in motorsport’s premier class and 103 poles.
Instead, Lewis Hamilton is lapped and taunted by Red Bull, beaten by his own new teammate and faced with the toughest test of his glorious time at Mercedes.
The performance potential of the W13 remains unused
“I’m definitely out of the World Cup,” said Hamilton in Imola, mood and voice heavily subdued. Certainly? In any case, team boss Toto Wolff does not want to give up the thought of the World Cup. “What I love about the sport is that it doesn’t always follow math.” And Hamilton’s stable rival George Russell, who at least made it to fourth place in the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, is convinced: “Lewis will come back incredibly strong. I have no doubts about that.”
If anyone has the maturity, the strength and the inner motivation to overcome this phase with “another horror show” (“The Sun”) in Imola, it is certainly Hamilton. He turned 37 at the beginning of January. He has been the first black man to drive in Formula 1 since 2007. He celebrated his first world title in 2008. With a bit more cleverness and experience, it would have worked in his debut year.
However, he and the Formula 1 world only experienced his true development after the switch from McLaren to Mercedes for the 2012 season. Hamilton was not only the nominal successor to seven-time champion Michael Schumacher there. Hamilton won the World Cup again in 2014 and 2015, and in 2016 he was beaten in a toxic stable duel by Nico Rosberg. Hamilton drew further lessons from his negligence at the time. He also shed his aversion to test drives. Always true to his motto: “Still I rise” – in German: I continue to grow.
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Mercedes team boss Wolff protects Hamilton
And he did. Hamilton followed up with the titles in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. And he would have triumphed in 2021 if the then race director Michael Masi hadn’t given Max Verstappen in the Red Bull another final chance to overtake with his decisions in the finale of Abu Dhabi on the last lap. “Maybe he should have stopped last year,” advised Red Bull’s motorsport boss Helmut Marko in Imola’s pride in winning and grinned at the camera.
Everyone can imagine how that is received in the Mercedes warehouse. Hamilton had completely withdrawn from the blow caused by the World Cup final for weeks. The days of Hamilton, who once publicly suffered from lovesickness, are long gone. Even the taunts of the rival Red Bull, who has been inferior to Mercedes for so long, will not knock Hamilton over.
But the problem is: Hamilton is neither the crisis trigger nor the crisis solver. He had to protect him there, emphasized team boss Wolff. It’s not his low, it’s the car’s performance low.
The problem is that the car bounces a lot, which means that the setup is not optimal and the performance potential of the W13 remains untapped. “If we manage to put the car reasonably straight on the track, we’ll be up front,” said Wolff and confirmed in the direction of Hamilton: “The guy is the best driver in the world, he just doesn’t have the machine and the equipment to show that.” Woe betide him if he has her again.