13th place in qualifying, 14th place in the sprint, 13th place in the race – the weekend in Imola is a low point for Formula 1 record world champion Lewis Hamilton. Accordingly depressed, the Mercedes driver says goodbye to his big goal for 2022 – and still remains confident.
The large-scale display on lap 39 already made it clear how miserable things are for Lewis Hamilton at the moment. At this point, the international Formula 1 directors decided to show the gap between the record world champion in a Mercedes and Max Verstappen, the reigning champion. After all, the cars of the two exceptional drivers were close together at the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari in Imola. However, only because Verstappen was already preparing to lap Hamilton after around two-thirds of the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix.
He was more than 77 seconds behind, with lap times of around 80 seconds. A little later, the marshals waved blue flags for the Briton: please give way and let a faster car pass. The humiliation followed on lap 41 when Hamilton visibly lifted the gas pedal on the start-finish straight to let the outstanding man of the three Imola days pass by in Verstappen. While he himself was ultimately classified as 13th and summed up his impressions of the fourth race weekend of the season: “I have nothing to do with the World Championship this year, that’s for sure.”
Even if Hamilton only formulated what the interested public and almost certainly he himself knew for a long time: It must have been a painful admission. It is not at all up for debate, said the 37-year-old, that he could still pose a threat to world championship leader Charles Leclerc. The Grand Prix on the traditional 4.909 kilometer circuit in northern Italy once again relentlessly revealed that. Team boss Toto Wolff even asked his pilot to apologize over the radio, describing the Mercedes as “undriveable” and the race as “terrible”.
The problem can only be solved on the track
There is no internal blame, said Wolff at the weekend in an interview with RTL / ntv. “What’s there is ‘Tough Love’, we put our fingers in where it hurts. We also analyze mercilessly when we’ve done something wrong,” said the Austrian. A scene in which he and Hamilton apparently clashed in the Mercedes pits after qualifying is more likely to be an expression of frustration at having crashed after years of unique success and eight constructors’ titles in a row. The W13, which was completely redesigned as part of the rule changes, is currently mediocre at best, the gap to Ferrari and Red Bull is huge.
In Imola, Hamilton once again lacked top speed, over 40 laps he was unable to overtake Pierre Gasly in the Alpha Tauri. “A weekend to forget” summed up the seven-time world champion after he had found himself at the end of the middle field with places 13 (qualifying), 14 (sprint) and 13 (race). No car jumps as noticeably as the Mercedes due to the airflow tearing off the underbody – George Russell reported pain in the upper body in Imola, which is caused by the hard ups and downs. Wolff even said “RTL/ntv” that the jumping was so violent “that the drivers need an osteopath to put everything back in order”.
There is a lot more than a second missing per lap to the top – and solving the problem seems complicated. That “is a lot harder to fix than we could have imagined,” Hamilton said. To make matters worse, this fundamental problem of the car cannot be reproduced in the wind tunnel. Mercedes therefore only remains to travel to the race weekends with solutions and to test in the training sessions whether the hoped-for improvement will occur. The upper budget limit introduced last year also means that every investment must be carefully considered, otherwise there will be no funds elsewhere.
“Painful”, but successful?
For Hamilton, this initially means that he will share the title of record world champion with Michael Schumacher after this season. Actually, the 37-year-old wanted to reach for the eighth triumph, which statistically would finally make him the most successful driver in the premier class of motorsport. It is the last great record of the former Ferrari hero, which Hamilton had not yet surpassed. Victories, pole positions, podium finishes, the Briton tops the rankings everywhere. His contract with Mercedes is valid until 2023, and Hamilton resolutely countered rumors of an early departure.
“Just because we don’t have it easy at the moment, I don’t throw everything away,” said the Brit, who has celebrated at least one win in each of his 15 Formula 1 seasons, also a record. The fact that he remains unsuccessful in his 16th year is not an option for him, despite the chance of his eighth world title that has already been written off. The scandalous defeat in the 2021 season finale, when Verstappen passed on the last lap of the last race, should still have too much of an impact.
A defeat that Hamilton does not want to let sit. The chance that the otherwise successful Briton will end his contract prematurely is correspondingly low. Even if the current situation is “painful” – and the way back to the top will require great effort and a lot of patience.
Torben Siemer