Mercedes struggles to extract potential from the car and avoid negative mark for Hamilton in F1

When seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton crossed the Emilia-Romagna GP finish line in just 13th position, one lap behind Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, race winner Mercedes boss Toto Wolff didn’t even wait for the Englishman. return to the pits to talk to him.

Over the radio, the Austrian showed his displeasure.

“Sorry for what you had to drive today. I know it’s undrivable. It was a horrible race. Let’s get out of this,” he said.

That was the fourth stage of a season in which Mercedes looks unrecognizable on the tracks. Even though George Russell finished the race in fourth, he also didn’t have a vehicle capable of fighting for the win – after five races, Hamilton and the newcomer to the team have as their best results of the year a third place each.

For more than half of the teams on the grid, a single podium would be cause for celebration. But that’s not the case for the team that boasts the greatest hegemony in F1 history. From 2014 to 2021, Mercedes won eight constructors’ and seven drivers’ titles, six with Hamilton and one with Nico Rosberg.

The team led by Wolff was the one that most benefited from the regulation change in the category in 2014, when the era of hybrid engines began.

This season, F1 debuted new regulations for the cars, and this time the German team saw rivals Ferrari and Red Bull leap ahead.

The Mercedes car “came with a radical concept”, explains Wolff, “which on paper had great results”. They didn’t confirm themselves on the runway. “The reality is that physics and theoretical physics don’t mix right now.”

The new vehicles in the category bring back the concept of the “wing car”. Designed in the shape of inverted airplane wings, they use elements of the “ground effect”, responsible for accelerating the air that passes under the car so that there is more grip and speed.

The concept produced cars that wobble or bounce along a circuit, the so-called “porpoising” effect. All teams are suffering from this to some degree, but Mercedes’ case is the worst.

Until a solution is made, Hamilton and Russell’s cars need to increase their height above the ground, which affects performance.

In the last leg, in Miami, the team debuted some parts, including the rear wing, and saw advances in the first free practice, on Friday, when Russell reached the best time. In the race, however, the performance was not the same – the newcomer was fifth, and Hamilton sixth.

Mercedes has reserved for this Sunday’s stage (22), at 10 am, at the Barcelona circuit, the biggest package of updates – the Band will broadcast the race.

The Spanish track was where the first part of the pre-season was held in February. At that time, the team’s cars had a concept closer to the conventional, similar to rival vehicles, still without the so-called “zero sidepods”, as the sides of Hamilton and Russell’s cars became known for being very narrow, leaving the edges of the floor protruding.

This protrusion may be behind the “porpoising” effect that is causing the car to bounce on the tracks and lose performance, especially speed, both on the straights and in the curves.

The idea of ​​taking the W13 updates to Spain is to compare the behavior of the current car and the performance of the one used at the beginning of the year, of a more conventional model.

“We kept testing configurations, installing new components, and that gave us answers and directions in which direction to go,” Russell said.

The seven-time champion has been sacrificed more than the rookie. Hamilton has been allowing Mercedes to do the most complicated tests in his car, and this helps to understand why his new teammate has more points (59 to 36).

“It’s a new experience for sure. You always want to try to move forward, but it’s very difficult when you’re not really moving forward,” admits the Briton.

In every interview, he tries to show confidence that the situation will be turned around. “We’re at the same speed as we were in the first race, so we have to keep trying. Unfortunately, we haven’t improved in those five races, but hopefully at some point we will.”

In addition to the desire to fight for victories again and, who knows, even for the title that would make him the biggest winner of the category in an isolated way, leaving the seven-time champion Michael Schumacher behind, the Englishman defends an impressive mark of victories.

Since debuting in the category in 2007, he has always won at least one stage every year. With that, he became the first driver in history to reach triple digits in the number of triumphs, with 103 —Schumacher is second on the list, with 91.

To maintain his writing, Hamilton will need to cling more than ever to the mantra he often remembers in difficult times and which was his first tattoo: “Still I Rise” (“I still rise”), the title of a poem by Maya Angelou ( 1928-2014), black writer and human rights activist.