2023 Mercedes-AMG | Petronas F1 Team

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I remember people were calling Hamilton washed after qualifying. Even with a subpar setup and from far behind, Hamilton can finish very close to Russell.

This is clearly one of his weakest tracks - he tends to struggle more at tracks where tyre warmup is critical / where the surface is smooth - and still not a bad performance overall

[AMG.Tzan]

I remember people were calling Hamilton washed after qualifying. Even with a subpar setup and from far behind, Hamilton can finish very close to Russell.

This is clearly one of his weakest tracks - he tends to struggle more at tracks where tyre warmup is critical / where the surface is smooth - and still not a bad performance overall

Hamilton’s strategy got destroyed by the safety car! It made absolutely no sense…he lost so much time at the start due to the Hard tires and then had to nurse mediums to the end with 30-35 laps to go!

Still he managed to stay quite close to Russell! Had he fought more with Russell surely he would have to make another pit stop…

[mendis]

I remember people were calling Hamilton washed after qualifying. Even with a subpar setup and from far behind, Hamilton can finish very close to Russell.

He was 14 seconds off when SC came in. He then bolted faster tyres and couldn't overtake George and then fell 5 seconds behind. George had the pace on hards that Lewis had on mediums and on hards, Lewis was lost. If that counts as finishing close behind, then good luck.

[AR3-GP]

“I think if I had the setup George had, I would have been in a better position. But yeah, there’s a lot to work on, but there are positives to take away.”

Hamilton was asked about who had made the choices regarding the individual setups applied to the cars, and how much say he had on how his own car had been set up to tackle the 50 lap race.

“We work on that. There was like a 50/50 choice,” Hamilton revealed.


“I chose one way, he chose another. More often than not, where he went was the wrong one, but it just happened to work.

“So I could only match his pace rather than be quicker this weekend. But I’ll work hard to make sure that we’re in a better place.”

https://www.planetf1.com/news/lewis-ham ... is-favour/


Lewis says that George more often than not picks the wrong setups.

[chrisc90]

I’m not sure how one can chose the ‘wrong setup’. Seems vastly opinionated in my opinion.

That’s saying Lewis knows exactly what setup is best overall, then judging George on his setup choice.

To me that sounds like another excuse from Lewis for this weekend and the lack of performance. I’m sure the drivers will talk in practice debriefs what they though worked, and what didn’t. And what the engineers and simulators were saying together with that.

It’s certainly a odd line to come out with, something I’ve never hear before in inter-team stuff.

[maidenhell]

“I think if I had the setup George had, I would have been in a better position. But yeah, there’s a lot to work on, but there are positives to take away.”

Hamilton was asked about who had made the choices regarding the individual setups applied to the cars, and how much say he had on how his own car had been set up to tackle the 50 lap race.

“We work on that. There was like a 50/50 choice,” Hamilton revealed.


“I chose one way, he chose another. More often than not, where he went was the wrong one, but it just happened to work.

“So I could only match his pace rather than be quicker this weekend. But I’ll work hard to make sure that we’re in a better place.”

https://www.planetf1.com/news/lewis-ham ... is-favour/


Lewis says that George more often than not picks the wrong setups.

That's not what Lewis said -- its more (charitably and) appropriately interpreted as 'more often than not, the setup direction that George went with doesn't work.'

[mendis]

https://www.planetf1.com/news/lewis-ham ... is-favour/

Lewis says that George more often than not picks the wrong setups.

It's good that George is choosing setups of his choice and will learn where the problems are, rather than simply taking Lewis' setup. Different drivers have different preferences to extract optimum out of the package.

[Sevach]

I remember people were calling Hamilton washed after qualifying. Even with a subpar setup and from far behind, Hamilton can finish very close to Russell.

This is clearly one of his weakest tracks - he tends to struggle more at tracks where tyre warmup is critical / where the surface is smooth - and still not a bad performance overall

Hamilton’s strategy got destroyed by the safety car! It made absolutely no sense…he lost so much time at the start due to the Hard tires and then had to nurse mediums to the end with 30-35 laps to go!

Still he managed to stay quite close to Russell! Had he fought more with Russell surely he would have to make another pit stop…

The SC also erased some 15s(and extending) deficit he had at that point already.

Every other driver, saying "he had a better setup" would be taken as ridiculous excuse.

[SparkyAMG]

Lewis has a history of opting for race-biased setups dating back to 2014 with Rosberg and they have more often than not brought him the results even if he has been out qualified on a Saturday.

I assume this is what he's referring to now because his race pace has generally been better than George so far, but the key difference is that the Mercedes is now a car that's going to qualify on the 4th row if you don't have a good Saturday and that's costing more on a Sunday than a quali-focused setup is costing George. In places like Jeddah with low Deg you can afford to take a more aggressive quali style setup but I feel like Lewis has failed to grasp that recently.

If they end up bringing car updates that land them in the space between Red Bull and the rest then opting for the race setup might start to pay dividends again, but until then he'll keep suffering if he continues to make the same choices.

[3.r.i.i.i]

Anyone who harshly criticizes Hamilton only proves how many complexes he has built up on that person. Every one forget what he achieved, but lets trash on him that the new F1 Age way.

[mendis]

Just to put the race/quali setup debate.some perspective.

https://www.planetf1.com/news/kimi-raik ... up-debate/

Kimi Raikkonen.

“It isn’t magic. I mean, people always ask ‘why don’t you put more emphasis on qualifying than on racing on the set-up side’, but in the end, what I’ve discovered over the last – I don’t know – 10 years is that there is no difference,”

“It’s not because you are going to do something for qualifying that it will be faster there but slower in the race and vice versa. It just doesn’t work like that. It may have been the case a long time ago, but as far as I can remember, it never has. Sometimes you do better.”

[mkay]

I remember people were calling Hamilton washed after qualifying. Even with a subpar setup and from far behind, Hamilton can finish very close to Russell.

He was 14 seconds off when SC came in. He then bolted faster tyres and couldn't overtake George and then fell 5 seconds behind. George had the pace on hards that Lewis had on mediums and on hards, Lewis was lost. If that counts as finishing close behind, then good luck.

In fairness to Lewis, his strategy failed to materialize as the SC came right as the hards reached crossover point with the mediums (pace-wise), and then he effectively had to make an early pit stop for mediums and make those last 30-odd laps.

Also, the hards clearly got better as the race went on and cars got lighter. Every hard runner pre-SC initially struggled for grip.

All in all, this is a very one-sided assessment of both of their race.

[mendis]

I remember people were calling Hamilton washed after qualifying. Even with a subpar setup and from far behind, Hamilton can finish very close to Russell.

He was 14 seconds off when SC came in. He then bolted faster tyres and couldn't overtake George and then fell 5 seconds behind. George had the pace on hards that Lewis had on mediums and on hards, Lewis was lost. If that counts as finishing close behind, then good luck.

In fairness to Lewis, his strategy failed to materialize as the SC came right as the hards reached crossover point with the mediums (pace-wise), and then he effectively had to make an early pit stop for mediums and make those last 30-odd laps.

Also, the hards clearly got better as the race went on and cars got lighter. Every hard runner pre-SC initially struggled for grip.

All in all, this is a very one-sided assessment of both of their race.

Strategy got compromised? How? Without SC, he had to run either 25-30 laps on hards and go to medium or go 30-35 laps and move to softs. He was losing loads of time and by 25-30 laps, he would been around 25 to 30 seconds behind. In case of 35 laps, the gap would have been even greater. With 25 laps to go and on fresh Mediums, do you think he would have cut down 30 seconds deficit to George? As we witnessed, George had the same pace on Hard that Lewis had on Mediums. The longer he runs on hards, the bigger performance gap to George, who would have shed the mediums on his lone stop around 20th lap and running on new hards, while Lewis was still on old hards, all the while increasing the gap. Without SC he would be long behind in an unrecoverable place.

[Sevach]

He was 14 seconds off when SC came in. He then bolted faster tyres and couldn't overtake George and then fell 5 seconds behind. George had the pace on hards that Lewis had on mediums and on hards, Lewis was lost. If that counts as finishing close behind, then good luck.

In fairness to Lewis, his strategy failed to materialize as the SC came right as the hards reached crossover point with the mediums (pace-wise), and then he effectively had to make an early pit stop for mediums and make those last 30-odd laps.

Also, the hards clearly got better as the race went on and cars got lighter. Every hard runner pre-SC initially struggled for grip.

All in all, this is a very one-sided assessment of both of their race.

Strategy got compromised? How? Without SC, he had to run either 25-30 laps on hards and go to medium or go 30-35 laps and move to softs. He was losing loads of time and by 25-30 laps, he would been around 25 to 30 seconds behind. In case of 35 laps, the gap would have been even greater. With 25 laps to go and on fresh Mediums, do you think he would have cut down 30 seconds deficit to George? As we witnessed, George had the same pace on Hard that Lewis had on Mediums. The longer he runs on hards, the bigger performance gap to George, who would have shed the mediums on his lone stop around 20th lap and running on new hards, while Lewis was still on old hards, all the while increasing the gap. Without SC he would be long behind in an unrecoverable place.

This 100%, i really don't get people saying the SC screwed Lewis.

[DGP123]

Without SC he would be long behind in an unrecoverable place.

So? Very much like Russell last year, before SC’s bailed him out time and time again. On at least three occasions last year, Russell was absolutely nowhere (AUS, Miami, Zandvoort come to mind) and then suddenly bang a SC, and he ends up leapfrogging Hamilton. But when you argue that was the reason he was able to beat Hamilton last year, it’s funnily not listened to. I wonder why.

I get this is your week, cos last week you had nothing to say, but let’s have it both ways.