The ‘different perspective’ of Hamilton’s vertical fall from the top of Formula 1

The most successful driver in Formula 1 history, Lewis Hamilton, spoke for the first time since the beginning of this season about the vertical fall – thanks to the problems of the Mercedes W13 – from the Olympus to the Weinstein of the sport. Though he didn’t want to expand too much, he said it was an “experience” from a different perspective.

Hamilton had found himself with an uncompetitive and problematic car in the regulations and with McLaren in 2012, but then things were very different: he was ten years younger, he only had one championship to his fortune at the time and his thirst for further success has every problem overcome.

He is now 37 years old, has not many seasons left, has seven World Championships ahead of him and the big problems of a clumsy car that does not say it should get better seem for a driver who has won victories and titles , much harder to be eight years compared to George Russell, who has a thirst for distinction which to this day he has not matched.

Hamilton started this season with a totally unexpected 3rd place in Bahrain, following the retirement of Max Ferstappen, but since then the year has taken a turn for the worse, finishing 13th at Imola while finding himself in the last Miami GP the top 6 can no longer start with the battered W13.

Commenting on that sharp drop from the zenith to the F1 nadir, Hamilton said: “It remains a racing achievement, but from a different perspective. You generally always want to try to move forward, but I say it’s hard enough if you’re not really moving forward. It is what it was and it is definitely an experience“.

When asked if Mercedes took even a small step forward in Miami to understand the problems of the W13, Lewis said: “Unfortunately, not. We have the same speed as in the first race, so we have to keep trying. Unfortunately we haven’t improved in those five games. But I have hope that one day we will succeed. We just have to keep trying and working hard“.

The Mercedes champion left some encouraging signs in Friday’s free practice session in Miami, where George Russell was completing his first year in the second period. But this increase in performance of the W13 did not continue in the two following days.

“If we look at our performance on Friday, it was the most competitive we’ve had this season.”explained the team’s technical director, Mike Eliot. “From Friday to Saturday we made some changes but they were pretty limited. There were some changes in the terms, so now we need to analyze all this data, understand as much as possible and thus come to the next 1-2 games“.

Eliot went on to say that developing the car and solving the jump problem were two completely different issues: “It is important to distinguish between the two. One concerns the normal course of the upgrades and the other addresses the problems we have with the bounces and other areas that limit our performance. So the wings we brought [στο Μαϊάμι] They undoubtedly delivered the performance we expected and that was a step forward.

At the same time, we collected a lot of data with the experiments we conducted on the track to understand the jumps. Every time the car comes out on track we learn something new and our goal is to understand the car faster than our opponents.

“There is a lot of work going on to figure out how we could improve the car, how we would take the next step forward, how we would smooth out bumps and how we would be competitive against the top teams where we want to be.”concluded the technical director of the Mercedes F1.