More than ever you can ask yourself at Mercedes in Barcelona: What if? What if Lewis Hamilton hadn’t collided with Kevin Magnussen on the first lap and suffered the puncture? Motorsport boss Toto Wolff puts forward a bold thesis at “Sky”: “Lewis’ pace was so strong that he would have fought for victory.”
It may sound odd given the mixed pace Mercedes – and Hamilton in particular – have shown in the opening races of the season, but the Austrian bases his theory on one thing: numbers.
After the puncture on the first lap and the forced pit stop, Hamilton was 54 seconds behind race winner Max Verstappen. On lap 62, however, he was only 39 seconds behind the Red Bull driver. This means that he gained 15 seconds on the dominant winner before the problems in the closing stages.
However, this opens up follow-up questions: What is the truth of the statements, and why did George Russell not fight for victory, who came through the race without incident and finished almost 33 seconds behind Verstappen?
On the first point, Wolff has to admit that Hamilton “probably” would have kept up with Verstappen, “but maybe not against Leclerc”. The Ferrari driver had to park his car prematurely with power unit problems when he was in the lead. So at least Mercedes could hardly have won on their own.
Especially since Verstappen also had problems with the DRS and was held up by Russell without being able to show his true pace. But the question of a possible Hamilton victory can only be answered hypothetically, since without the collision he was on a completely different strategy than all 19 other drivers – namely at the start on medium.
Why was he so much faster than Russell?
But why was he able to gain so much time over his team-mate over the course of the race? He had a much worse pace than Red Bull and Ferrari. But that actually seems to be a consequence of the puncture and Hamilton’s subsequent attitude. Because Hamilton actually wanted to give up the race.
“Lewis was grumpy then,” says Wolff on ‘ORF’. “He also looked less at the limits as far as the tires are concerned and just got faster and faster and then sometimes faster than the front ones.”
At Russell, on the other hand, they did too much tire management and consequently lost grip, as Wolff explains. “Whereas Lewis has claimed the tire recklessly and has always had it in the window as a result.”
The fact that he was even able to overtake Carlos Sainz with the same tires in the end makes the head of motorsport confident that Mercedes has taken the right steps: “I’m actually very satisfied, but of course not euphoric, ecstatic. But we’ve made a big step forward. We’ve freed ourselves from midfield,” he said.
The silk thread is back
Towards the end of the race, however, there were again major concerns about reliability. In the final phase, Mercedes instructed its two drivers not to push themselves to the limit, as otherwise there would be a risk of retiring.
“We had a water leak at Lewis and that was really touch and go, whether we even finish it,” says Wolff. Russell, on the other hand, simply overheated. And that gives Mercedes a bit of a headache.
“The bad news is, that was the max cooling we have,” explains Wolff. If the team were to equip the W13 with an even larger cooling system, that would mean another loss in performance. “But we were already open to the maximum and I’m not sure if our engine survived at all.
“Hamilton: “Never gave up”
But that’s another topic. At least the W13 seems to be doing better now than it did at the start of the season, when Hamilton finished tenth at Jeddah and finished non-points at Imola without incident.
“Yes, everything has been difficult since the last race last year,” notes Hamilton. “We’ve had big problems and setbacks and not much luck in general. But we got back up, kept going and never gave up.”
“We started the race positively and then had the problem again. And then coming back feels like it used to be, in previous races. It feels fantastic,” says the seven-time world champion, for whom the race was “like a win”. .
“To be honest,” he adds, “it usually feels even better when you come from so far behind and have been through so much.”
Are there wins this year?
Hamilton tells of a five-year-old girl he spoke to yesterday who was terminally ill. “She asked if I could win the race for her. I said, ‘I don’t know if I can win, but I’ll give it my all.’ So for me it was like a victory that I dedicate to her.”
Barcelona’s performance at least gives him confidence that he can still win this season. Because Mercedes have improved a lot, especially in the race. You have to show that now in qualifying, where you did an experiment with George Russell this weekend that went better for him.
“Maybe I’ll go in that direction at the next race. But at least it’s a great sign that we’re on the right track,” emphasizes Hamilton. “Because if it hadn’t been for today, I would have fought with the Red Bulls. That gives me hope that one day we will fight for victory.”