Lewis Hamilton aims pointed dig at Mercedes ahead of making Ferrari move
Seven-time Formula 1 world champion Lewis Hamilton will leave Mercedes after 11 years once the current season ends, having agreed to drive for Ferrari in 2025 and 2026
Lewis Hamilton has once again voiced his frustration with Mercedes (
Image: Marco Canoniero/LightRocket via Getty Images
Lewis Hamilton has savaged Mercedes’ W15 car by claiming that he’s in conflict with it ‘every second’ of the race.
Mercedes’ continued struggles in Formula 1 this season have led to him sitting eighth on the leaderboard after eight Grands Prix. Hamilton, 39, hasn’t even made it onto the podium in two-and-a-half years, with his team struggling to build a car capable of challenging for a world championship since a change of regulations in 2022.
Weeks before the current season got under way, Hamilton announced that this year would be his final one driving for Mercedes, having signed a two-year contract with rivals Ferrari ahead of the 2025 campaign. The seven-time world champion has now made a dig at Mercedes over the W15 machine which he and team-mate George Russell haven’t been enjoying life in.
Appearing on an episode of the YouTube series, Hot Ones – where guests are challenged to eat an increasingly spicy range of chicken and sauces – host Sean Evans asked: “You once said, ‘During a race, you become one with the car’. It made me curious, when are you most in conflict with the machine you’re driving?”
“Right now!” Hamilton instantly replied, laughing. Evans continued by asking: “At what point in the race do you feel you’re trying to make the car do something it doesn’t want to do?”
“At the moment it’s every second,” Hamilton bemoaned. “But probably at the beginning of the race when you’re on heavy fuel, you can’t go 100 per cent, you can’t do qualifying laps every lap. So you have to pull back and try to hit the corners a little slower to go longer.
“And knowing how much to pull back. Sometimes you pull back too much and when you end your stint and go in for your pit stop you still have tyres left. That’s the point when you realise you didn’t use them up.”
Lewis Hamilton has been less than impressed by Mercedes’ W15
It was only on Sunday when Hamilton last vented his frustration with Mercedes, having been unhappy with their race strategy during the Monaco Grand Prix. The 39-year-old was one of just a few drivers who’d started the race on hard tyres, so when the GP was red flagged during the first lap because of collision between Sergio Perez, Kevin Magnussen and the unfortunate Nico Hulkenberg, they had to switch to the mediums.
“I told you guys,” an annoyed Hamilton was heard saying over the team radio. “I think it was going to be long either way, whichever tyre you were on, but I wanted to start on the [medium],” he later explained.
“I felt that something was going to happen at the beginning of the race and normally that would create an opportunity to switch over to the hards and go away to the end. But I think at the end of the day everyone drove so slow that it didn’t make any difference.”