Regardless of how Sunday morning’s Australian Grand Prix plays out, for Lewis Hamilton just crossing the line must be counted as success. He enjoys a wide range of interests but snake-handler was surely never one he anticipated having to adopt as he wrestles with a positively venomous Mercedes that may have already cost him any hope of an eighth Formula One championship.
The race in Melbourne will likely mean a continuation of the fascinating fight between the frontrunners, Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc who took pole and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen who was just behind him. In an object lesson of the travails facing Mercedes this season, Hamilton and his teammate George Russell managing fifth and sixth on the grid was considered a success. Comparatively it was, Hamilton was 16th in qualifying at the last round in Saudi Arabia.
This was a small victory then but its context is what really matters for the bigger picture of the season ahead. Hamilton was still a full second off the front of the grid, moreover he had done it by wrangling his recalcitrant car on the very edge, with the constant threat it would rear up and bite him.
He has been blunt about the problems facing Mercedes thus far this season but in Melbourne there was a suggestion it was almost getting personal.
“The problem is when you push that car a little bit more she is quite spiteful,” he said. “She is like a viper or like a rattlesnake, you never know.”
Mercedes’ issues are well documented and in Melbourne they were laid painfully bare. Their car was strong in sector one and solid in the second but in the final sector the time fell away in vast chunks, unable to attack the high-speed corners. The car is still suffering from the violent jarring known as porpoising due to a downforce stall on straights that then prevents smooth corner entry. The problem seemed exacerbated in Melbourne particularly into the turn nine-ten chicane that is now at the end of a long back straight.
With two races down Hamilton is used to the experience but was illuminatingly descriptive of what this meant in the cockpit. “Basically we just have to try and find a level of the bouncing, as hardcore as we can go without rattling our brains out,” he said.
Lewis Hamilton said he felt uncomfortable after members of Formula One’s ruling body failed to wear face masks during a drivers’ briefing for Sunday’s Australian Grand Prix.
F1’s new race director, Niels Wittich, chaired a two-hour meeting at Melbourne’s Albert Park on Friday night where he announced a clampdown on jewellery and insisted on fireproof underwear. Under local law, it is not mandatory to wear a face mask in an enclosed space.
Hamilton, speaking after he qualified fifth for the third round of the new season, said: “No one in the drivers’ briefing were wearing masks. Some of the drivers were but most of the FIA were not, which for me was uncomfortable. It was the longest drivers’ briefing of my life. I have been racing a long time and they have never done such a long briefing.
“I don’t understand the small things they are picking up on, like the underwear – are we really talking about that kind of thing? But anyway you take it and move on.”
Hamilton will head into Sunday’s race 29 points adrift of the championship leader, Charles Leclerc. The Ferrari driver will start from pole position, with Hamilton the best part of a second slower in his misfiring Mercedes machine.
“We have not made any progress,” added the seven-time world champion. “I really hope over this next week we can get as much information and figure something out. I wish I could be optimistic and say we have got something better coming, but at the moment we don’t. Winning is a long way off, a second off, so it is a huge gap.
“I don’t enjoy driving this car but I enjoy the collaboration with the guys, knowing that there is a steep hill to climb and remaining hopeful that we will get there.” PA Media
The Mercedes team principal, Toto Wolff, has been honest in his assessment of their issues but eschewing the serpent metaphor, described a “gremlin” in their car and their efforts to deal deal with it. “We need to continue to analyse and look at the data,” he said. “It’s physics not mystics.”
Australia is race three of the season in what is looking like a straight fight between Ferrari and Red Bull with Leclerc and Verstappen at the sharp end. Mercedes and its drivers have maintained hope that if they solve their problems, the car will come good and potentially be very fast but after this round that prospect looks an awfully long way off. The chances of them catching the leaders are diminishing apace, as a disenchanted Hamilton admitted there was currently nothing in the pipeline to turn round their fortune.
“We have not made any progress,” he said, “I wish I could be optimistic and say we have got something better coming, but at the moment we don’t. Winning is a long way off, a second off, it is a huge gap.”
Wolff conceded their hopes of competing for the title had dropped to as little as 20% and even that may be optimistic should Leclerc or Verstappen extend their lead further in Melbourne. Indeed Wolff echoed Hamilton in admitting the solution could still be beyond the horizon.
“I’m optimistic that eventually we will get there, whether it is two races or five, or the season,” he said. “My time horizon is not a race weekend or a year, it is more like ten years.”
Two weeks lie ahead before the next round at Imola where the team must surely at least have gone some way to charming this snake if there is to be any hope of a tilt at the title.
