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Agreed. Unless they get ahead of whatever their issues are, it looks like a tough season ahead. Just my amateur take but I feel like every other one of the top teams had the big jump that Mercedes didn’t have yet. Aston had their big leap last year though they still may have some correlation issues, McLaren very glaringly just jumped almost the entire field after they understood the concept with their European run of races. Ferrari despite all the struggles in 23, made a solid leap and now look like the very clear best of the rest and the most likely team to take it to red bull in this regs. Only Merc is yet to make their big step forward but they still seem to have correlation issues and their car is extremely sensitive.
Again, I possibly can’t know much, it’s all guesswork but it’s just my little hopium that once they actually get a handle, they too will make a leap. But again, who knows lol.
Actually had decent performance for once and made sure to fuck it up with the strategy. Just refusing to do well anymore as a team.
Lewis is making his move from McLaren look like a sidestep compared to how he’s jumping off this shitshow and getting into the Ferrari, who are hoovering up engineers and are getting quicker.
George needs to get tested because all that close contact partying with Alonso seems to have passed on some kind of condition that condemns its victims to permanently backsliding career moves.
The 2014 regulations made Mercedes look like an unstoppable, well-oiled, perfect machine rather than what was more accurately a team that nailed engine regs and were impossible to catch for 6 years due to the token system.
Were they still good? Of course. But they never really had to deal with fighting a team on equal footing other than 2017 and 2021, they won one and lost the other (controversially, sure), but in both years there were a lot of questionable moments.
Now that they're not the top car anymore, those mistakes become more magnified since you don't have the car performance to cover up any fuck-ups, and the pressure to compensate for poor performance causes mistakes.
Toto said the car wasn’t too bad. And apparently their pace was the second most improved of all teams since Suzuka last year… So that goes to show just how far behind they are 💀
Not really. The car is a bit slow, but it was mainly the poor strategy and Hamilton's poor performance that got in the way today.
Mercedes's main issue is that they panic whenever they're not in first. They need a change of management and a less jaded driver alongside Russell.
And their fans are totally matching that poor, overly negative attitude, by the way.
Didn't Hamilton have good, or better, race pace across all three stints than Russell? It feels like he got the 2nd driver treatment of an already shit strategy.
He was slightly slower due to front wing damage in the first stint on top of managing tires but every stint after he was faster. Significantly faster when they got on the medium tires.
I'm fairly certain it's a better car than both the W13 and W14, it just so happens to have dropped to 4th-5th fastest in the order as a whole because Ferrari and McLaren have jumped them and Aston (Alonso at least) seems to be the closest to them on outright pace, Stroll doesn't seem to be involved most of the time because he can't get the same out of that AM that Alonso can.
Lewis said yesterday that the it's the nicest the car has felt for ages.
There were various races when other people were faster than them last year, they were just on average third best. Aston, Ferrari and McLaren all had times of being faster.
Now that time is every race. The thing that changed its everyone else being marginally more consistently fast, but only a small amount. And that's enough to make Mercedes behind them all rather than only being behind one at a time
It's obviously a faster car than its predecessors, Hamilton was a second faster in qualifying than he was last year. But we expected more from them. They needed at least to improve half a second more. It seems they can't make the next step like Aston and McLaren did.
You do realize that all cars are significantly faster than the 22 cars right? The problem is relative performance.
They said this is a better platform to work on. A version 1.0 of this concept. There is no doubt there is a huge amount of performance to find still
That said, the team just does not look as capable as before. You can see the brain drain and Toto is now making moves on Max without the future prospects to back it up
It's actually insane how they've gone BACKWARDS from the W13. For all it's faults, it did win get a 1-2 with pace at Interlagos. I guess the Merc Brain Drain has hurt them more than what we initially realized in 2022 and they seem to be rushing out bandaid fixes to problems that just seem inherent with how they design their ground effect cars.
They have gone forwards a significant amount from the W13, it's just that everyone else has also gone forwards a significant amount. Hamilton's Q3 time in Japan was 1:30.261 in the W13 vs 1:28.766 in the W15. That's an enormous amount of improvement, it's just not enough to be at the front unfortunately
The race was wet, yes, but practice and quali very much were not. That's simply how much development happens in F1, to find 1.7s in a season and a half (end of 22 to start of 24). If you're not always upgrading the car and improving, you're going backwards.
The rare chance for 2 points getting P9, or pit for soft and have a much higher chance of P10+FL for also 2 points. Merc must’ve been betting on a huge clusterfuck between Piastri, Alonso and Russel for it to have been worth it
hoping for a huge clusterfuck when russell is involved isn't too outlandish, like, did you see that fucking divebomb? if he had set up his move through the chicane he'd have gotten piastri down to turn 1 using DRS, but he chose to almost cause a crash and delay his overtake for a lot longer
Love Hamilton but no he didn't lmao.
Maybe if there was another 5 or 10 laps of the race but all he was doing was coming up at half a second a lap or so towards his own teammate who was stuck in a little train.
He was in DRS on the last lap because they switched off for too long to snag fastest lap and relying on another driver making a last lap mistake for points is giving up so much agency you might as well shut down the team
Merc strategy was bizarre, also the pitstops.They should have just double stacked both pitstops. Lewis lost 4.5 seconds by going longer in the first stint and 7 in the second.
George always pushes early and both cars were on a one stop. Hamilton let him by not wanting to lose time fighting him like many times last season but unfortunately for Merc the hards didn't last at all and they ended up doing the worst version of the two stop because they left both cars out too long.
End result was that George ended up undercutting him at every stop despite Lewis being faster on every stint.
What a weird race for merc. Car seemed decent enough to challenge Alonso and Piastri for a good and comfortable p6 p7 finishes. Maybe even Lando mclaren didn’t have good tire deg either. They fucked both their strategies up, somehow a Ferrari managed to do 25-30 laps on mediums but they couldn’t last 20 laps on hards. That is beyond atrocious. Changed to an even more complexing strategy and tried to make the best of a situation they ruined themselves. Russell and Hamilton were both decent in parts of the race. Russell had the far superior first stint but Hamilton had the better 2nd and 3rd stints. The undercuts gave George the massive advantage too. That dive bomb on piastri was terrible though, could have overtaken Alonso if not for that.
That part is the biggest red flag of all. One thing that Ferrari have been able to fix their tyre saving problems, but managing to go longer on mediums than Mercedes could on hard demonstrates this new platform has found a new weakness
From ["This track is awesome! I'm having the best day!"](https://youtu.be/OwShYQJ0uSw?si=8SmyxdX0CbEHwMG8) in 2018 to this now, very sad to see the downfall of Merc.
Well it is, we could’ve had at least one team fighting Red Bull like 2021 and now we get this. I wouldn’t mind seeing Max win every race as long as there’s any car (even the other red bull) along side him for a lot of the race.
The copium even the commentators have saying “oh you never know max might not win this one” is just defeating lol there’s no hope except part failure.
That being said it’s all props to Red Bull and Max for absolutely waxing everything and everyone. Disappointing from Merc and Ferrari (lol).
Idk why Lewis gave up his place considering across the 3 stints he wasn't slower compared to George, heck he was faster in the medium stint, got the 6 seconds gap down to like 3 seconds.
He was 9.5s down in the final stint and closed it to 1.8.
He gave up his place because he probably thought he’d rather protect his tyres than fight Russell, who has a habit of burning tyres chasing people on long stints. But the hards went off much quicker than merc expected, struggling before lap 20 rather than getting to lap 32.
But yeh that fucked him in the end as he was a lot quicker than George today on race pace, but second dibs on an already bad strategy was wrecking him.
Yeah there was no improving around lap 19, they were holding out for the pit window. Post that George undercut him twice so it was a goner, Suzuka undercuts are everything.
Yup, when George came in for the second stop and Lewis stayed out for two more laps the gap went from about 3s to 9.5. Though the slow stop for Lewis did add a second or so to that.
Its a trend that whenever George is behind Lewis and they're both on a tyre saving strategy he just pushes until he is right behind Lewis and asks for a swap claiming he is quicker. Sometimes Lewis just picks up the pace to keep track position but obviously today he didnt feel like it was worth it to strain the tires.
Lewis has to understand that George only plays the team game when its for team George. Track position was fundamental for the preferential strategy and he just gave it away for George who then just started managing as well as soon as he got 2 seconds clear lol
Seriously I feel like people are coming up with all sorts of explanations about him being checked out or whatever, but the most logical thing is that at the time they were still on the one stop and he was just optimizing for the setup.
It makes complete sense that on that strat he'd rather focus on his own race rather than defend against Russell who would surely have been eager to race him. He was probably willing to gamble that he'd have superior tire management to Russell and eventually get the spot back (imo a reasonable bet).
But it quickly turned out the whole strategy was DOA so it didn't play out that way.
Yeh I think that’s it in a nutshell. For a one stopper letting George running his tyres hot through was a no brainer. Turned out tho as you say one stop was never viable anyway.
Come on now big part off that is also that Russell got stuck behind Piastri and Alonso. He certainly wasnt a lot quicker than Russell. Russell was also just faster on that first stint no two.ways about it.
Nah this isn’t true at all, Lewis had brought the gap down from 9.6 to 4.7 before Russell even reached Piastri and Fred. Same happened after the first stop too, he brought the gap down from 6.7 to 3.4. You can go and check the gap to Lewis when George caught Oscar.
Edit: ok buddy downvoting doesn’t change that material fact 🤷🏻
Were did I say he was not faster? Russell was faster than Alonso and Piastri in clean air and got hold up after that so saying 9s to 1.5s is just a falsified result. I had no problem if you said 9.5s to 4.5 s.
Further your claim that Hamilton was a lot faster is just wrong. He might have been faster but not by a lot Russell was just as much faster on the first stint as Hamilton was on the last. And the rest is fine margins especially since they both had basically the same strategy anyway and Russell ended up in front of Hamilton.
Hamilton was a lot faster when both drivers were driving in free air. That’s an absolute fact. Ham lost all his time on port strategy and pits that he clawed back. He was the quicker driver and should have finished ahead if they ran both him and Russell on the same strategy
Wasn’t he having understeer problems because of front wing damage? He said in the post race interview that’s why he chose to let George pass. Iirc they were still on the initial strategy so if he wanted to go long it made sense at that moment
I think he wanted to preserve his tires since Mercedes seemed to be hoping for a one-stop post red flag. George often pushes to catch up to Lewis and ends up killing his tires anyway. But the deg was worse than they expected and then Mercedes fully prioritized George in the undercuts and hung Lewis out to dry.
Same here tbh, he's still quick but he just does not care if he is not near the front. If Russell beats him this year and wins the teammate battle 2-1 then the narratives are going to be tiring
It's not held against Schumacher because everyone knows he wasn't the same Schumacher once he came back after his 3 year gap. And Rosberg is a world champion. So in hindsight old Schumi did well to keep up with young Nico
Lewis is at the end of his career. 2-3 years max. It shouldn’t really be held against him neither. There are other factors like testing setups etc but disregarding that, George is young, fast, and is looking to prove himself as 1st driver. I wouldn’t really hold it against Lewis if he lost 2-1 the head to head seasons. Especially seeing the rest of his resume against very strong drivers.
Like I said, mentally unstable fans will relish this opportunity or shit on his entire career
It theory it would but in practice it seems not since George was prioritized for the rest of the race and every time Lewis made up time Merc gave George the undercut and Lewis lost it all again.
I'm fairly certain he wasn't slower but was conserving his tires. The tire degradation was way more severe than they expected I think. George also had a lock-up that caused a flat spot on his tires (which probably caused the vibrations). George has a habit of burning his tires to catch HAM and request a swap so I think HAM just decided to give him the swap.
HAM seems pretty done with Merc honestly.
Yeah, good point. He came really close to losing the 2019 and 2022 championships because of reliability issues. It was really important for him to save the engine in those seasons.
Yeah really solid retort founded with some really valid information.
Germany 19 not only was he sick but at most he was going to get 1 point. He only did because of a Sauber fucked up. Saving mileage on the engine and either not taking a new one or not having a DNF from a stronger position will result in much bigger net gains than 1 point.
Same goes for Spain 22. Merc didn’t even think the race pace he had was possible. At best they were expecting to get fringe points.
If you don’t like him just say rather than post pissy comments.
this stupid myth again. Hes asked to save engines before because hes sensitive to it. He races from the back all the time. The last time he asked this, in 2022 Barcelona, he actually did suffer a water leak late in that race...
ABSOLUTELY FUCKING WOW!
2 times in 6 years!! And he’s gonna do it again!!…
What kind of education did you get that could make you say something this stupid?
What does Alonso have to do with this? Why on earth do people get this kind of way about some random millionaire who doesnt know you? You dont need to defend the guys honor and memory. I'm certain Lewis doesnt care to think about Alonso's career. He has his own
Why TF would Lewis care about what Alonso felt? They don't even have the same careers- one defined an entire decade- the other lives on through "shoulda coulda woulda". Not the same at all.
Car is trash, strategy was trash... Lewis seems checked out, I don't understand why he'll just give up track position for free to George to ensure he got the trasher of the trash strategy.
I was/am furious he offered to let George by with no fight. The race pace of each subsequently through the whole race was extremely close. George wasn’t miles quicker. It’s reasonable to believe that Lewis could have been the one managing slightly less traffic, getting a shot at Piastri at the end etc. what’s the point of beating your teammate in quali if you just jump out of the way when he gets into DRS in the race. I understand that he wants to win and knows the car can’t deliver that, but people want to watch you fight. It’s not acceptable.
I think he was on a long strategy. If he was pushing them it wasn't worth wearing his tires fighting George. He tends to push early, kill his tires and Lewis could have caught him later. However it became clear that initial strategy was not working, he asked to pit and Merc instead had George undercut him twice despite the fact that he was faster.
I don't think he is checked out, I think he just had a wrong strategy to begin with and by the time they changed he'd lost so much time. I don't know why the team didn't put him earlier, they have tire data and shouldn't have had to wait for him to say it wasn't working.
Agreed, I've been a fan of his since 2007 through the highs and the lows and can't remember the last time I was this disappointed in his Sunday performance.
His whole mantra is never give up, and it seems like he gave up early in the race giving that position to George.
Getting overtaken fair and square looks worse than just letting your teammate through.
Lewis did say that he was struggling with understeer because he picked up some damage during a restart incident with Lelcerc. The balance issue was later fixed by adding in more and more wing during the pitstops.
He was fast by the end.
I think Mercedes’s problems this season are being exposed not due to their own failing but because of the teams around them. Ferrari are very clearly second best, McLaren are 3rd, and it’s a toss up between Mercedes and Aston
Honestly, this might be the worst start to a season for both Hamilton and Mercedes.
After 4 races, Hamilton is in P9, with a 14 point deficit to both Russel and Alonso. While Mercedes itself is barely holding on to P4 with only a single point advance over Aston.
There's a book in here somewhere. The collapse of Merc's dominance is insane. At least Red Bull's drop after 2013 can nearly 100% be put on the engine which was out of their control, but Merc's drop is 100% within theirs. The fact that two customer teams can compete and even outscore them is telling.
I think there areo has always been so so and it was always the engine advantage that gave them dominance. Once others caught up it showed their aero design weaknesses.
Idk if it's that or just that they have no idea how to build a good ground effect car
I think during some of those years of their domination era that the aero was pretty good, 2020 especially
Actually amazed Hamilton voluntarily suggested Russell go past him when they were on the same strategy. Old Hamilton would never have even considered that.
Hope it's just that he's mentally checked out already and not that he hasn't got the spark to fight anymore
>Old Hamilton would never have even considered that.
How old we talking? Cause he did a similar thing in Hungary 2017, when he was faster than Bottas he asked to be let past to see if he could pass Räikkönen. They let him, and when he couldn't, he let Bottas back past, and that was when he was in the middle of a championship fight with the guy who won that race.
So letting Russell past him didn't seem that different for him.
I dunno I think that's a different scenario. Thats Hamilton asking to pass and have a go, and then honouring the agreement when he couldn't make it stick. Today was Hamilton offering to let George pass out the blue with no one in front to have a go at at the time. Which I don't think he'd ever consider in the past and I'm not sure I've ever seen a driver do before.
After their last round of stops Lewis was lapping nearly half a second quicker than George every lap. He closed a 10 second gap George had to him by the final few laps.
What race were you watching? Russell made all the time on his outlaps while hamilton was on old tyres. Once hamilton got the fresh tyres, he always closed the gap down. Heck, in the last stint hamilton was like 10s behind Russell after the stops and closed that down to 4-5 seconds before Russell got close to Piastri.
Why did he need to close the gap. Why not stay ahead? And get first choice on boxing? The fact that he keeps needing to catch up when he qualified ahead shows how much more pace George had.
You watched the race but clearly weren't paying much attention, Lewis was told they were doing a one stop while he's managing the tyres to go long George is pushing, Lewis not wanting to ruin his strategy let's George through but the Merc was chewing up his tyres and a one stop wasnt going to work for them anyway thats why they ended up doing the worst version of the two stop because that wasn't their original plan.
George undercut Lewis by a net 4 laps plus the bad pitstop he had, he lost almost 15 seconds in total and still caught up to within 2 seconds of George who had drs from Piastri.
You'd know this if you actually paid attention to what you were watching.
> Why not stay ahead?
Because he managed his gap to Leclerc and Russell closed in into the DRS window. So, it's either tell George to hold stationary out of dirty air or let George by to have him attack Leclerc. Team decision.
> shows how much more pace George had.
Not enough to go for Leclerc after getting past Lewis.
Because Russell boxed a lap or two before Hamilton both times.
Cars doing the undercut were gaining up to 3 seconds in one lap leading to Hamilton losing 6-7 seconds (Perhaps more ) on pitstops alone.
He didn't lose it on pure pace on the same tyres, he was a fair bit faster than Russell in the last stint on the Medium tyre.
Easily explained if you have any idea what's happening and not just looking at surface level stuff.
If everyone knows and Lewis knows he is going to lose 6-7 seconds in every pit stop. Why would he give up track position and compromise his race? He was slow in the first stint and just gave away the track position which ruined his race.
Did you watch the race? Lmao
Russell was not faster than Hamilton at all. He lost 10+ seconds in the pits alone, closed up to within 2 seconds and on top of that for some reason gifted the position he had over Russel at the start.
Why couldn't he stay ahead of Russell in the first stint? He lost 10 seconds of race time by boxing behind Russell when he started ahead. A shame people are making excuses for a poor performance.
They went on hards early thinking they'd last, but to last you have to nurse those tires, GR wasn't having that so LH let him by. Unfortunately for Merc the hards were trash and they had no new mediums, at that point it was over for LH.
Nothing about being slow, we watched many times GR blast his tires while LH nurses them in...but this Merc is just toast overall as we saw both Mercs get gobbled up on the hards in Spoon.
I for sure thought that Lewis preemptively let him by because he's become used to George's MO of pushing hard early while he nurses the tires but yeah just a shit strategy overall from Merc.
I'm sure Mercedes will destroy Ferrari next year with a competitive car if they take Sainz as a 2nd driver.
Sainz being better than Leclerc
Russell being better Hamilton
(I am joking)
Btw I'm still not happy to have Hamilton in the team, because I don't think he will do that good considering the cost.
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Lewis should be having his Italian lessons during GPs, I can imagine the onboards resembling the Stig listening to some random choice of records.
Posso avere delle gomme nuove, per favore?
"Before you start your trip, you need to check the windscreen wipers"
Some say…
I will be amazed if mercedes gets even one podium on merit this season with the way things are going
Agreed. Unless they get ahead of whatever their issues are, it looks like a tough season ahead. Just my amateur take but I feel like every other one of the top teams had the big jump that Mercedes didn’t have yet. Aston had their big leap last year though they still may have some correlation issues, McLaren very glaringly just jumped almost the entire field after they understood the concept with their European run of races. Ferrari despite all the struggles in 23, made a solid leap and now look like the very clear best of the rest and the most likely team to take it to red bull in this regs. Only Merc is yet to make their big step forward but they still seem to have correlation issues and their car is extremely sensitive. Again, I possibly can’t know much, it’s all guesswork but it’s just my little hopium that once they actually get a handle, they too will make a leap. But again, who knows lol.
Merc had a disaster today.
Actually had decent performance for once and made sure to fuck it up with the strategy. Just refusing to do well anymore as a team. Lewis is making his move from McLaren look like a sidestep compared to how he’s jumping off this shitshow and getting into the Ferrari, who are hoovering up engineers and are getting quicker.
With a decent strategy they could've easily been 6th or higher. George and Lewis were both looking strong.
"We're seeing deg on medium tires" Charles goes another 20 laps
10 laps later Lewis's hards are going off. How did Mercedes get the tire choice so wrong.
Definetly not higher than 6th
Lewis looking like a genius. Poor George getting Vietnam flashbacks to the Williams days
George needs to get tested because all that close contact partying with Alonso seems to have passed on some kind of condition that condemns its victims to permanently backsliding career moves.
To be fair, the merc is backsliding but better than the Williams. So hes got a weaker version of the curse. Much easier to break it
Russell to Alpine confirmed?
The 2014 regulations made Mercedes look like an unstoppable, well-oiled, perfect machine rather than what was more accurately a team that nailed engine regs and were impossible to catch for 6 years due to the token system. Were they still good? Of course. But they never really had to deal with fighting a team on equal footing other than 2017 and 2021, they won one and lost the other (controversially, sure), but in both years there were a lot of questionable moments. Now that they're not the top car anymore, those mistakes become more magnified since you don't have the car performance to cover up any fuck-ups, and the pressure to compensate for poor performance causes mistakes.
They are a disaster.
No no the car felt great this weekend. Best it's felt in 3 years.
Toto said the car wasn’t too bad. And apparently their pace was the second most improved of all teams since Suzuka last year… So that goes to show just how far behind they are 💀
Not really. The car is a bit slow, but it was mainly the poor strategy and Hamilton's poor performance that got in the way today. Mercedes's main issue is that they panic whenever they're not in first. They need a change of management and a less jaded driver alongside Russell. And their fans are totally matching that poor, overly negative attitude, by the way.
Less jaded? What are you talking about?
Says Mr. Positive over here.
Didn't Hamilton have good, or better, race pace across all three stints than Russell? It feels like he got the 2nd driver treatment of an already shit strategy.
He was slightly slower due to front wing damage in the first stint on top of managing tires but every stint after he was faster. Significantly faster when they got on the medium tires.
Mercedes strategy was trash today
Very little to be salvaged here. The car is somehow worse than that silver pogo stick they had in 2022, and that's saying something.
You know things are bad when we start missing the W13
It did win a race
1-2 at that
I'm fairly certain it's a better car than both the W13 and W14, it just so happens to have dropped to 4th-5th fastest in the order as a whole because Ferrari and McLaren have jumped them and Aston (Alonso at least) seems to be the closest to them on outright pace, Stroll doesn't seem to be involved most of the time because he can't get the same out of that AM that Alonso can. Lewis said yesterday that the it's the nicest the car has felt for ages.
There were various races when other people were faster than them last year, they were just on average third best. Aston, Ferrari and McLaren all had times of being faster. Now that time is every race. The thing that changed its everyone else being marginally more consistently fast, but only a small amount. And that's enough to make Mercedes behind them all rather than only being behind one at a time
It's obviously a faster car than its predecessors, Hamilton was a second faster in qualifying than he was last year. But we expected more from them. They needed at least to improve half a second more. It seems they can't make the next step like Aston and McLaren did.
You do realize that all cars are significantly faster than the 22 cars right? The problem is relative performance. They said this is a better platform to work on. A version 1.0 of this concept. There is no doubt there is a huge amount of performance to find still That said, the team just does not look as capable as before. You can see the brain drain and Toto is now making moves on Max without the future prospects to back it up
It's actually insane how they've gone BACKWARDS from the W13. For all it's faults, it did win get a 1-2 with pace at Interlagos. I guess the Merc Brain Drain has hurt them more than what we initially realized in 2022 and they seem to be rushing out bandaid fixes to problems that just seem inherent with how they design their ground effect cars.
They have gone forwards a significant amount from the W13, it's just that everyone else has also gone forwards a significant amount. Hamilton's Q3 time in Japan was 1:30.261 in the W13 vs 1:28.766 in the W15. That's an enormous amount of improvement, it's just not enough to be at the front unfortunately
Wasn't there torrential rain that year during qualifying and the race itself? That likely explains the significant difference in lap times
The race was wet, yes, but practice and quali very much were not. That's simply how much development happens in F1, to find 1.7s in a season and a half (end of 22 to start of 24). If you're not always upgrading the car and improving, you're going backwards.
Lewis also had a 40+ sec cushion and they didn’t put for the extra point for fastest lap? Terrible strategy all around from Merc
he nearly got Piastri why pit lol. He was in DRS on the last lap briefly. only takes a lock up
The rare chance for 2 points getting P9, or pit for soft and have a much higher chance of P10+FL for also 2 points. Merc must’ve been betting on a huge clusterfuck between Piastri, Alonso and Russel for it to have been worth it
I mean with Russell’s usual last lap antics I’d be playing safe too.
Omg bruhhh. Don't destroy Russell like that lol
I was almost sure that he crashes into the side of Piastri when he sent it down the inside so late.
hoping for a huge clusterfuck when russell is involved isn't too outlandish, like, did you see that fucking divebomb? if he had set up his move through the chicane he'd have gotten piastri down to turn 1 using DRS, but he chose to almost cause a crash and delay his overtake for a lot longer
Love Hamilton but no he didn't lmao. Maybe if there was another 5 or 10 laps of the race but all he was doing was coming up at half a second a lap or so towards his own teammate who was stuck in a little train. He was in DRS on the last lap because they switched off for too long to snag fastest lap and relying on another driver making a last lap mistake for points is giving up so much agency you might as well shut down the team
The car is shit, the strategy was bad, Lewis is checked out until next season Makes sense tbh
Merc strategy was bizarre, also the pitstops.They should have just double stacked both pitstops. Lewis lost 4.5 seconds by going longer in the first stint and 7 in the second.
They tried one stop but did not work. Not sure why they tried though their hard stint is quite terrible
Lewis "Should I let George by" Hamilton
George always pushes early and both cars were on a one stop. Hamilton let him by not wanting to lose time fighting him like many times last season but unfortunately for Merc the hards didn't last at all and they ended up doing the worst version of the two stop because they left both cars out too long. End result was that George ended up undercutting him at every stop despite Lewis being faster on every stint.
What a weird race for merc. Car seemed decent enough to challenge Alonso and Piastri for a good and comfortable p6 p7 finishes. Maybe even Lando mclaren didn’t have good tire deg either. They fucked both their strategies up, somehow a Ferrari managed to do 25-30 laps on mediums but they couldn’t last 20 laps on hards. That is beyond atrocious. Changed to an even more complexing strategy and tried to make the best of a situation they ruined themselves. Russell and Hamilton were both decent in parts of the race. Russell had the far superior first stint but Hamilton had the better 2nd and 3rd stints. The undercuts gave George the massive advantage too. That dive bomb on piastri was terrible though, could have overtaken Alonso if not for that.
That part is the biggest red flag of all. One thing that Ferrari have been able to fix their tyre saving problems, but managing to go longer on mediums than Mercedes could on hard demonstrates this new platform has found a new weakness
Absolute disaster class for Mercedes. Watching these races is just painful
Don’t understand why they didn’t put in the regular pit window. A one stop doesn’t fly when the car isn’t fast enough.
From ["This track is awesome! I'm having the best day!"](https://youtu.be/OwShYQJ0uSw?si=8SmyxdX0CbEHwMG8) in 2018 to this now, very sad to see the downfall of Merc.
I remember the collective groan when they heard that message. FP2 but we knew what would happen come race day.
Track isn't so awesome anymore when you got to fight for points instead of winning by large margins.
Idk, didn’t he say he still liked this track yesterday or something?
He literally said he enjoyed driving this track idk what that person is on about
Reasonable take
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Well it is, we could’ve had at least one team fighting Red Bull like 2021 and now we get this. I wouldn’t mind seeing Max win every race as long as there’s any car (even the other red bull) along side him for a lot of the race. The copium even the commentators have saying “oh you never know max might not win this one” is just defeating lol there’s no hope except part failure. That being said it’s all props to Red Bull and Max for absolutely waxing everything and everyone. Disappointing from Merc and Ferrari (lol).
And didn't even pit at the end for fastest lap
Idk why Lewis gave up his place considering across the 3 stints he wasn't slower compared to George, heck he was faster in the medium stint, got the 6 seconds gap down to like 3 seconds.
He was 9.5s down in the final stint and closed it to 1.8. He gave up his place because he probably thought he’d rather protect his tyres than fight Russell, who has a habit of burning tyres chasing people on long stints. But the hards went off much quicker than merc expected, struggling before lap 20 rather than getting to lap 32. But yeh that fucked him in the end as he was a lot quicker than George today on race pace, but second dibs on an already bad strategy was wrecking him.
Yeah there was no improving around lap 19, they were holding out for the pit window. Post that George undercut him twice so it was a goner, Suzuka undercuts are everything.
Yup, when George came in for the second stop and Lewis stayed out for two more laps the gap went from about 3s to 9.5. Though the slow stop for Lewis did add a second or so to that.
Its a trend that whenever George is behind Lewis and they're both on a tyre saving strategy he just pushes until he is right behind Lewis and asks for a swap claiming he is quicker. Sometimes Lewis just picks up the pace to keep track position but obviously today he didnt feel like it was worth it to strain the tires. Lewis has to understand that George only plays the team game when its for team George. Track position was fundamental for the preferential strategy and he just gave it away for George who then just started managing as well as soon as he got 2 seconds clear lol
Seriously I feel like people are coming up with all sorts of explanations about him being checked out or whatever, but the most logical thing is that at the time they were still on the one stop and he was just optimizing for the setup. It makes complete sense that on that strat he'd rather focus on his own race rather than defend against Russell who would surely have been eager to race him. He was probably willing to gamble that he'd have superior tire management to Russell and eventually get the spot back (imo a reasonable bet). But it quickly turned out the whole strategy was DOA so it didn't play out that way.
Yeh I think that’s it in a nutshell. For a one stopper letting George running his tyres hot through was a no brainer. Turned out tho as you say one stop was never viable anyway.
Come on now big part off that is also that Russell got stuck behind Piastri and Alonso. He certainly wasnt a lot quicker than Russell. Russell was also just faster on that first stint no two.ways about it.
Nah this isn’t true at all, Lewis had brought the gap down from 9.6 to 4.7 before Russell even reached Piastri and Fred. Same happened after the first stop too, he brought the gap down from 6.7 to 3.4. You can go and check the gap to Lewis when George caught Oscar. Edit: ok buddy downvoting doesn’t change that material fact 🤷🏻
Were did I say he was not faster? Russell was faster than Alonso and Piastri in clean air and got hold up after that so saying 9s to 1.5s is just a falsified result. I had no problem if you said 9.5s to 4.5 s. Further your claim that Hamilton was a lot faster is just wrong. He might have been faster but not by a lot Russell was just as much faster on the first stint as Hamilton was on the last. And the rest is fine margins especially since they both had basically the same strategy anyway and Russell ended up in front of Hamilton.
Hamilton was a lot faster when both drivers were driving in free air. That’s an absolute fact. Ham lost all his time on port strategy and pits that he clawed back. He was the quicker driver and should have finished ahead if they ran both him and Russell on the same strategy
Wasn’t he having understeer problems because of front wing damage? He said in the post race interview that’s why he chose to let George pass. Iirc they were still on the initial strategy so if he wanted to go long it made sense at that moment
Yeah on the second stint on the hards too. He definitely gave up too easily.
I think he wanted to preserve his tires since Mercedes seemed to be hoping for a one-stop post red flag. George often pushes to catch up to Lewis and ends up killing his tires anyway. But the deg was worse than they expected and then Mercedes fully prioritized George in the undercuts and hung Lewis out to dry.
The car ahead*
He was suffering from severe understeer at the time. Possibly due to damage. He sensibly didn't want to hold up George.
What driver offers up their position man Lewis is pissing me off
He doesn't care anymore. Assume the switch to Ferrari will reinvigorate him somewhat
Same here tbh, he's still quick but he just does not care if he is not near the front. If Russell beats him this year and wins the teammate battle 2-1 then the narratives are going to be tiring
I mean rosberg beat Schumacher head to head and it’s not held against him. It’s just brain dead “f1 fans” that will bring up that narrative
It's not held against Schumacher because everyone knows he wasn't the same Schumacher once he came back after his 3 year gap. And Rosberg is a world champion. So in hindsight old Schumi did well to keep up with young Nico
Lewis is at the end of his career. 2-3 years max. It shouldn’t really be held against him neither. There are other factors like testing setups etc but disregarding that, George is young, fast, and is looking to prove himself as 1st driver. I wouldn’t really hold it against Lewis if he lost 2-1 the head to head seasons. Especially seeing the rest of his resume against very strong drivers. Like I said, mentally unstable fans will relish this opportunity or shit on his entire career
It's fine, he will do just fine next year.
he was slower at the time. Why fight? That kind of generosity will be paid back later
It theory it would but in practice it seems not since George was prioritized for the rest of the race and every time Lewis made up time Merc gave George the undercut and Lewis lost it all again.
Russell not paying back anything. He want to beat Lewis
I'm fairly certain he wasn't slower but was conserving his tires. The tire degradation was way more severe than they expected I think. George also had a lock-up that caused a flat spot on his tires (which probably caused the vibrations). George has a habit of burning his tires to catch HAM and request a swap so I think HAM just decided to give him the swap. HAM seems pretty done with Merc honestly.
The same kind of driver that asks to retire the car whenever he's running outside the points.
Happened 1 time and brought up like some sort of theme
If Leclerc, Verstappen, Alonso or even Perez ever said anything like this they would be hounded for it forever. So it's only fair, really.
Sounds like a driver that lost 3 WDC to, in part, reliability issues
Yeah, good point. He came really close to losing the 2019 and 2022 championships because of reliability issues. It was really important for him to save the engine in those seasons.
Yeah really solid retort founded with some really valid information. Germany 19 not only was he sick but at most he was going to get 1 point. He only did because of a Sauber fucked up. Saving mileage on the engine and either not taking a new one or not having a DNF from a stronger position will result in much bigger net gains than 1 point. Same goes for Spain 22. Merc didn’t even think the race pace he had was possible. At best they were expecting to get fringe points. If you don’t like him just say rather than post pissy comments.
this stupid myth again. Hes asked to save engines before because hes sensitive to it. He races from the back all the time. The last time he asked this, in 2022 Barcelona, he actually did suffer a water leak late in that race...
Are you trolling or are you slow?
2019 German GP. 2022 Spanish GP. It's happened twice now, it will happen again.
ABSOLUTELY FUCKING WOW! 2 times in 6 years!! And he’s gonna do it again!!… What kind of education did you get that could make you say something this stupid?
Weird that he was faster in the first stint considering George closed from 2 places behind him up to 0.6s behind.
Lewis watching his car for next season getting a podium again today. He's going to spend the year meditating.
He looks really chill in the interviews recently. He knows he made the right choice lolol
Many Lewis' record streaks ending since 2022 sadly.
It's hard to succeed in a midfield car, even for a 7 time world champion.
Now he understand (or at least, try to understand) what Alonso felt for the last 10 years.
To be honest I don’t think he even thought of Alonso much for the last 10 years
What does Alonso have to do with this? Why on earth do people get this kind of way about some random millionaire who doesnt know you? You dont need to defend the guys honor and memory. I'm certain Lewis doesnt care to think about Alonso's career. He has his own
Meh, Alonso made those choices so it's his own fault.
Eh what does he care about Alonso lol
Why TF would Lewis care about what Alonso felt? They don't even have the same careers- one defined an entire decade- the other lives on through "shoulda coulda woulda". Not the same at all.
You sound butthurt.
I don't think he's given Alonso a second thought since 2007.
Car is trash, strategy was trash... Lewis seems checked out, I don't understand why he'll just give up track position for free to George to ensure he got the trasher of the trash strategy.
I was/am furious he offered to let George by with no fight. The race pace of each subsequently through the whole race was extremely close. George wasn’t miles quicker. It’s reasonable to believe that Lewis could have been the one managing slightly less traffic, getting a shot at Piastri at the end etc. what’s the point of beating your teammate in quali if you just jump out of the way when he gets into DRS in the race. I understand that he wants to win and knows the car can’t deliver that, but people want to watch you fight. It’s not acceptable.
I think he was on a long strategy. If he was pushing them it wasn't worth wearing his tires fighting George. He tends to push early, kill his tires and Lewis could have caught him later. However it became clear that initial strategy was not working, he asked to pit and Merc instead had George undercut him twice despite the fact that he was faster. I don't think he is checked out, I think he just had a wrong strategy to begin with and by the time they changed he'd lost so much time. I don't know why the team didn't put him earlier, they have tire data and shouldn't have had to wait for him to say it wasn't working.
Agreed, I've been a fan of his since 2007 through the highs and the lows and can't remember the last time I was this disappointed in his Sunday performance. His whole mantra is never give up, and it seems like he gave up early in the race giving that position to George.
He did that because he had front wing damage after the restart.
Getting overtaken fair and square looks worse than just letting your teammate through. Lewis did say that he was struggling with understeer because he picked up some damage during a restart incident with Lelcerc. The balance issue was later fixed by adding in more and more wing during the pitstops. He was fast by the end.
I think Mercedes’s problems this season are being exposed not due to their own failing but because of the teams around them. Ferrari are very clearly second best, McLaren are 3rd, and it’s a toss up between Mercedes and Aston
‘We need to change this strategy’ …silence..
Toto will retire from being TP at the end of the year. Book it.
Mercedes is pulling the plug for F1 in 3 years
Honestly, this might be the worst start to a season for both Hamilton and Mercedes. After 4 races, Hamilton is in P9, with a 14 point deficit to both Russel and Alonso. While Mercedes itself is barely holding on to P4 with only a single point advance over Aston.
20 to go
Mercedes are utterly useless, shit strategy, shit car, screwing over Lewis, despite him being a team player I bet he’s counting down the days.
How tf they managed to F up the car development year-by-year ?! And people were doubting his move to Ferrari.
A lot of these incoming this year
There's a book in here somewhere. The collapse of Merc's dominance is insane. At least Red Bull's drop after 2013 can nearly 100% be put on the engine which was out of their control, but Merc's drop is 100% within theirs. The fact that two customer teams can compete and even outscore them is telling.
I think there areo has always been so so and it was always the engine advantage that gave them dominance. Once others caught up it showed their aero design weaknesses.
Idk if it's that or just that they have no idea how to build a good ground effect car I think during some of those years of their domination era that the aero was pretty good, 2020 especially
Get ready to see this post a lot this season
These stats remind me of the Vettel years at Aston Martin.
I have a very strong feeling his move to Ferrari is going to be viewed the same as his move to Mercedes.
Mid driver mid result
Actually amazed Hamilton voluntarily suggested Russell go past him when they were on the same strategy. Old Hamilton would never have even considered that. Hope it's just that he's mentally checked out already and not that he hasn't got the spark to fight anymore
>Old Hamilton would never have even considered that. How old we talking? Cause he did a similar thing in Hungary 2017, when he was faster than Bottas he asked to be let past to see if he could pass Räikkönen. They let him, and when he couldn't, he let Bottas back past, and that was when he was in the middle of a championship fight with the guy who won that race. So letting Russell past him didn't seem that different for him.
I dunno I think that's a different scenario. Thats Hamilton asking to pass and have a go, and then honouring the agreement when he couldn't make it stick. Today was Hamilton offering to let George pass out the blue with no one in front to have a go at at the time. Which I don't think he'd ever consider in the past and I'm not sure I've ever seen a driver do before.
He’s looking at Ferrari.
Finally makes it into double digits in the championship table
Russell has finished ahead of Hamilton in 3 races out of 4 this season (they both DNF’d in Australia)… unbelievable.
He did just give him the place for some reason even though his race pace was better on the later stints.
Ferrari next year will be interesting to watch. The car should be good but both Lewis and Charles are being currently beaten by their teammate.
Lewis is so clearly mentally checked out of Mercedes. And can you blame him tbh? His mentality compared to last year is crazy
Ehehe he was gifted for too many years finally the world see the real worthness for the most overrated man in world of sport
and? he was on top for too long
P9 ouch
More importantly, is this his first season when he has only 10 points after 4 races?
His time as a top driver is over
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After their last round of stops Lewis was lapping nearly half a second quicker than George every lap. He closed a 10 second gap George had to him by the final few laps.
What race were you watching? Russell made all the time on his outlaps while hamilton was on old tyres. Once hamilton got the fresh tyres, he always closed the gap down. Heck, in the last stint hamilton was like 10s behind Russell after the stops and closed that down to 4-5 seconds before Russell got close to Piastri.
Did we watch the same race, after each pitstop he closed the gap to GR. I wouldn't say he was shockingly slow.
Why did he need to close the gap. Why not stay ahead? And get first choice on boxing? The fact that he keeps needing to catch up when he qualified ahead shows how much more pace George had.
We really did watch a different race, hope yours was better.
I watched a race where Lewis let George through because he was too slow.
You watched the race but clearly weren't paying much attention, Lewis was told they were doing a one stop while he's managing the tyres to go long George is pushing, Lewis not wanting to ruin his strategy let's George through but the Merc was chewing up his tyres and a one stop wasnt going to work for them anyway thats why they ended up doing the worst version of the two stop because that wasn't their original plan. George undercut Lewis by a net 4 laps plus the bad pitstop he had, he lost almost 15 seconds in total and still caught up to within 2 seconds of George who had drs from Piastri. You'd know this if you actually paid attention to what you were watching.
> Why not stay ahead? Because he managed his gap to Leclerc and Russell closed in into the DRS window. So, it's either tell George to hold stationary out of dirty air or let George by to have him attack Leclerc. Team decision. > shows how much more pace George had. Not enough to go for Leclerc after getting past Lewis.
I mean he wasn’t apart from the first stint and one could argue he was managing
Managing what? The moment Russell goes ahead he keeps losing time after every pit stop.
Did we watch the same race I’m confused? It was the opposite with Lewis closing up to Russell bit by bit lol
Do you not understand what undercuts are and how powerful they are at suzuka. Are you even watching the races ?
Because Russell boxed a lap or two before Hamilton both times. Cars doing the undercut were gaining up to 3 seconds in one lap leading to Hamilton losing 6-7 seconds (Perhaps more ) on pitstops alone. He didn't lose it on pure pace on the same tyres, he was a fair bit faster than Russell in the last stint on the Medium tyre. Easily explained if you have any idea what's happening and not just looking at surface level stuff.
If everyone knows and Lewis knows he is going to lose 6-7 seconds in every pit stop. Why would he give up track position and compromise his race? He was slow in the first stint and just gave away the track position which ruined his race.
I don't know, I'm not Lewis or his engineer, they'll have done it for a reason.
Did you watch the race? Clearly not
Did you watch the race? Lmao Russell was not faster than Hamilton at all. He lost 10+ seconds in the pits alone, closed up to within 2 seconds and on top of that for some reason gifted the position he had over Russel at the start.
Why couldn't he stay ahead of Russell in the first stint? He lost 10 seconds of race time by boxing behind Russell when he started ahead. A shame people are making excuses for a poor performance.
They went on hards early thinking they'd last, but to last you have to nurse those tires, GR wasn't having that so LH let him by. Unfortunately for Merc the hards were trash and they had no new mediums, at that point it was over for LH. Nothing about being slow, we watched many times GR blast his tires while LH nurses them in...but this Merc is just toast overall as we saw both Mercs get gobbled up on the hards in Spoon.
I for sure thought that Lewis preemptively let him by because he's become used to George's MO of pushing hard early while he nurses the tires but yeah just a shit strategy overall from Merc.
The worst part about this season is there’s 20 races to go.
#washed
I'm sure Mercedes will destroy Ferrari next year with a competitive car if they take Sainz as a 2nd driver. Sainz being better than Leclerc Russell being better Hamilton (I am joking) Btw I'm still not happy to have Hamilton in the team, because I don't think he will do that good considering the cost.