Lewis Hamilton’s difficult revelation: “Is it me or the car?”

lewis hamilton He is used to driving the best cars on the grid, winning six of his seven titles between 2014 and 2020.and that He competed for the championship until his final stint in 2021 with VerstappenStay 2 years in a row without a win, far from glorious. The seven-time world champion is left with honey on his lips, deeply hurt by the controversial decision in the direction of the race that saw him stripped of the title on the final lap in Verstappen’s favor at the end of the 2021 World Championship. Became. He fell short of his record of eight titles.

Then the new regulations for 2022 started, and Mercedes, a team that has rarely made mistakes so far, was hoping to find the key to the new regulations to produce a winning car. However, his innovative concept of zeroing the pontoons did not work and he suffered far from victory, despite George Russell outperforming him in his debut race for Mercedes. I did. It was a difficult moment, Lewis Hamilton recalled in a wide-ranging interview with the BBC.

Lewis asked the team to put the car concept aside, but they insisted on it for early 2023 and soon realized they had to scrap it for good. He changed cars completely midway through the course, but still had no chance of winning. Of course, Hamilton believes the team already has a clear path to 2024 and wants the team to take a decisive step forward, no matter how difficult it may seem to catch up with Red Bull.

“When you have a tough season like this, there are always times when you think, ‘Is it me or is it the car? Do I still have it? Is it gone?'” Because you lack it…when the magic happens, When the car, you, and the glow all come together, it’s amazing. And that’s what you’re looking for.” He revealed that he has been away from winning over the years, admitting that he has started to doubt himself, and insisting that he is more than just an F1 champion, he is “just a human being”.

In that sense, the British player highlighted the enormous pressure surrounding him and how his achievements and defeats are perceived by the press and fans at this point in his career, in which he has no choice but to do what he does. We have assured that we will take action regardless of the situation.”All I can do is lose. ” According to Hamilton himself, this made him ponder whether he wanted to remain in F1.

“There’s a lot of glitz and glamor and a lot of good, but it’s never easy to be your best, to keep being dedicated, to keep training, to keep delivering, it’s a lot of pressure. ” You are constantly being watched and I am in a place in life where I cannot win. If I win a race, I’m like, “Oh, he’s his seven-time world champion, he’s got 103 wins.” If I don’t do well (criticism)…that’s why I have no choice but to lose in this life. So I guess “There was a time when I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go through that.”

Nevertheless, Hamilton managed to recover from the thought. He wanted to remain in F1 at the age of 38 and renew his contract with Mercedes (until 2025). Because he still loves his job. “I still love driving, I still love being in cars. I still understand this when they start the car and there are teams around, people going to the pit lane. “I still smile as much as I did the first day I drove it.”

Best version of 2023

In 2023, Lewis Hamilton has raised the bar. In 2022, he suffered a lot with his car, gaining more experience and having to experiment more with more complex settings to find solutions for his car. said his results were more compromised than Russell’s. However, in 2023 Stevenage showed he was much more consistent and better than George. “Most of my performances in the race were really good, so I’m happy to get back to the level I should be,” he commented on the BBC.

“Qualifying is still an area we need to improve on. We are struggling as a team to get performance out of this tire, but you’ll see that one weekend George was very bad and I was good, but then , another weekend the situation changed, “and it goes down to the details of the car,” he added.

The pressure of not winning for two years

“Without a doubt, we are feeling a lot of pressure, not just for Toto (Wolff, Mercedes team principal), but also for all of us, all over the world. Everyone at the factory is feeling a lot of pressure on everyone. ing”

“Hopefully, the results of the race and some of the performances I’ve been able to achieve so far will inspire the (factory) staff to say, ‘Oh, we’re almost there.'” That’s how the whole system goes, ‘Oh, he still has it, if we work hard and give him a car, he’ll get us there.’ It drips down. That’s what I strive for. ”

About Verstappen

“If you look at the lap times and some of Max’s data, you can see that most of the time he’s just relaxing at the front. I don’t think he’s broken a sweat all year.”

“Even when I was chasing him in Austin, I don’t think he broke a sweat. I think he was just able to control it. And when you’re in a position to perform, the car We’ll go further. The tires will last longer.’

2024 cars

Mercedes changed the concept and added a pontoon to Monaco’s more Red Bull style car before developing the car to fight for the second best single-seater car. But they realized they would have to wait until 2024 to take the final step in their fight for victory. Due to budget constraints, we could not afford to make a series of fundamental changes to the vehicle’s architecture that would have to wait until 2024. Now, according to Hamilton, they have a concrete path to follow and more certainty.

“I think we have a North Star (to chase) right now, and I think it’s been the case for the last two years. But it’s not a straight path to get there. And there are certain things that… When you get stuck, there’s nothing you can do because of cost constraints or a variety of other reasons. ”

“If you look at the Red Bulls in Bahrain last year, they had a rebounding problem and they fixed it that week. So you can imagine, if you try to build a wall, you put brick after brick. It’s just development, development, development. Maybe they just added something and didn’t improve performance. But they were still building. In our case, on the other hand, we had to knock down walls in terms of aerodynamics, so to speak. We spent a lot of aero on it. “Last year’s first car. We basically had to take it out. We were trying to give it a ton of downforce and then slowly add it. But… Every time we tried to add, things got worse. So we just didn’t do it, it’s something we should improve on.”For a long, long time.

“I think we have a much better understanding of the car. They’ve developed some great tools behind the scenes, so I’m obviously hopeful, but I’m not going to hold my breath.”

lose confidence

“I can imagine they’re also nervous about making too big a change and it being the wrong one. And we need to close a big gap[with Red Bull]so we’ve been We’re aiming higher than that, and that really complicates the situation.”

It was clear that an agreement would be reached with Mercedes.

“During the negotiations, I believed that the negotiations would happen.”

Motive for the title

“Winning the World Championship is a huge part of that drive…and we will continue to build with the team in terms of impactful work and continue to drive forward with the team in Mission 44 (Foundation). “I don’t know how far we can go.” “We can go and I’m trying to expand it. That means we have to raise more money. If we want to do more work, we need to build a bigger team.” We have to. Winning a Grand Prix in places like Brazil and Africa, Africa will be huge.”

I knew the 2023 car wasn’t the right one.

“I remember feeling exactly the same. And it definitely wasn’t a great feeling. I had really high expectations.”

When I downloaded the car’s destination in February, I became even more anxious because the year before that I had thought, “This car is amazing, it’s unique, no one will ever have something like it.” . Then I went to the first test…I was a little more cautious, listened to the story, and thought, “I’ll give it a try.” And the car had all these problems. “I knew it was going to be a long year.”

“I think there was definitely some frustration, because I asked for certain changes and they weren’t made. My reaction was to have a big conversation with the team about what the issues were. No one knew exactly what it was, no one knew how to solve it.” From the previous year’s experience, “I just tried to dig deeper and sit down with the guys.” We had a much better meeting.”

“I’ve been able to stay more positive throughout the year and say, ‘It’s going to be a long season, but let’s not give up. Whatever it is, let’s keep pushing to get the most out of the car.’ I think this year they were thinking, “The basics are good, we just need to get to this point,” but that wasn’t the case. That’s why I was frustrated in February because they didn’t make the changes I requested. But at the beginning of the year we didn’t necessarily have a north star, we knew exactly where to go.