Hamilton now named in Mercedes sabotage accusations

Lewis Hamilton is for many a marmite character. Either people love him with blind passion – the Hamfosi, as we have called them here on TJ13 – or perhaps there are others who see the seven-time world champion as a master of media manipulation . And in the sport of Formula 1, understanding how to bend the media to your point of view is a skill learned over many years.

Lewis is not having a good year. He's trailing teammate George Russell 8-1 in qualifying and the race so far and Hamilton threw the tin hat group into a tailspin when in Monaco he claimed he wouldn't beat Russell for the rest of the year in qualifying.

A prediction, huh? George could well crash into the wall – for example in Singapore during qualifying – and start the Grand Prix in P20, so where will Lewis be in this scenario?

The reality is that Lewis is simply not comfortable with how the new ground-effect F1 cars should be driven. For eight years from 2014, Mercedes designed a car that suited Hamilton's driving style, which meant he could push to the max without fearing the car would slide out from under him.

Those days are gone and even the big regulation change coming in 2026 will see cars using significant downforce produced under the cars floor.

Lewis Hamilton is statically the most successful driver in Formula 1 history, but debate continues to rage over whether he is truly the greatest of all time. A true motorsport icon and ranked among the world's greatest celebrities, the seven-time F1 champion knows how to promote himself even when results on the track are not particularly good.

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The British driver now faces his toughest test since joining F1 in 2007, as he battles for the third consecutive year with the difficult-to-handle Mercedes W15. Yet in F1 there is one measure by which a driver's performance can be identified regardless of the car's capabilities: and that is the comparison of his results with those of his teammate in a nearly identical machine.

Now 8-1 behind George Russell in Grand Prix qualifying this season and behind his teammate by 69-55 points, Hamilton prepared the media to explain this apparent loss of his racing genius. Earlier this season, Lewis blamed his teammate for his deficit, claiming it was due to his experimentation with the troublesome W15's setup.

If it is to be believed, George was normally in charge of tuning the car during testing sessions, while Lewis was “forced” to adopt crazy experiments in an attempt to help Mercedes find the silver bullet they were missing .

Yet in an interview with Auto Motor und Sport, Mercedes track engineering director Andrew Shovlin claimed these volatile setup changes meant Lewis had “made himself a victim on several occasions” through his experimentation.

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Writing in his Daily Telegraph column last month, Gary Anderson – Jordan's former chief technical director – explained that Hamilton's experiences are hindering the Mercedes team's progress:

“There is also a knock-on effect that hinders the development of the car in the long term. If you make strange configuration choices, a team fails to find a baseline for performance and configuration. Anderson explained of his experience.

“This limits learning to drive. If this is absent, then the path to development, knowing what to work on in the wind tunnel and improving aerodynamic performance, will also be confusing.

“This leaves a team without positive direction,” concludes the exF1 engineer.

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Of course, while Lewis presents himself as the sacrificial lamb in his efforts to take a big step forward in the Mercedes car's performance, this is actually a thinly veiled attempt to explain away his deficit in real performance to his teammate who has twelve years less experience in the field. F1.

Hamilton became famous for playing the role of victim when at Monaco 2011 he blamed his repeated visits to stewards on racism. The then-McLaren driver was arrested in front of all but one race official that year for his “reckless” driving and collisions with others. When asked why he knew the FIA ​​judging office so well, he replied: “Maybe it’s because I’m black.”

Of course, Lewis was making an attempt at irony, quoting a saying regularly used by British comedian Ali G. Yet the subtle idea was placed in the public domain that while Lewis was on the right track, his chaotic actions were being unfairly judged by those who had a skin color different from his. .

Hamilton was criticized by Michael Schumacher's teammate and now Sky F1 commentator Martin Brundle when in 2016 he refused to take seriously questions about why he was beaten by teammate Nico Rosberg. After a loss to Rosberg at the Japanese Grand Prix, Lewis refused to answer questions by debuting a live Snapchat video at an FIA press conference, where he uses the app to don bunny ears and mustaches on himself and Carlos Sainz as the world's F1 media were forced to watch in amazement.

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At the time, Martin Brundle commented: “Instead of focusing on the world championship, he seems to be focusing on an app that puts rabbit ears on people. It's childish and stupid. Ironically, Brundle concluded: “What’s going to be interesting is if that’s going to be a driving force, or is his focus misguided?”

That year, the psychological battle that raged between the Mercedes teammates saw Rosberg come out on top and become only the second F1 teammate to defeat Hamilton in a season.

Following suggestions from Lewis this year at Monaco that there was a conspiracy against him within the Mercedes team and that the result would not allow him to qualify Russell for the rest of the season, his compatriot and now winner of the IndyNXT racer Jamie Chadwick denounced Hamilton's 'shooting'. in a Channel 4 interview with David Coulthard.

“I think he knows what he’s doing.” Chadwick asserted. “He's spinning it to make it look like maybe he didn't get the upgrades this weekend, which for me I'm not sure about because a team like Mercedes usually always brings upgrades. improvements to both cars.”

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His argument being in Monaco, Mercedes had a new front wing upgrade, which George Russell eventually installed on his car, but only after Hamilton refused to use the newly designed component.

“It’s not like they have to share it (regularly) between the two cars,” Chadwick continued: “So yeah, I think he should take his hat off to George. He's 7-1 against someone like Lewis Hamilton, which is incredible. And I think Lewis is probably not happy about that, to be honest. And that's where this comment comes from.

Mercedes later explained that they had proposed a coin toss to see who would get the upgraded component, but Hamilton had refused out of concern that if he damaged it during testing under park rules, its replacement with another of different specifications would see Lewis forced to start the Grand Prix. Prices from the pit lane.

“He’s leaving next year,” observed Chadwick, “George is going to be in this seat for what they hope will be a long time, so they need to keep this seat and keep George happy.

“And obviously that could come from the fact that Lewis is maybe not that happy, but at the same time he (George) has done an incredible job, he's crushing it.”

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Now with another string of defeats under his belt in Canada, where George Russell took the first podium of the year for the Mercedes F1 team, Lewis emerged in Barcelona with another controversy surrounding him as an e- An anonymous email was circulating in the paddock claiming that Mercedes was now deliberately nodding Hamilton and favoring Russell.

Such is the intensity of the rabid Hamfosi and their blind support for their hero, it is no surprise that this excuse has been made for his poor performances this season. While it is highly unlikely that even Lewis was involved in this stunt, it once again highlights the British driver's power in the F1 media.

Hamilton's new boss for next season at Ferrari scorned the allegations, saying in Spain on Friday: “How can you imagine that a company of 1,500 people working night and day, doing everything possible to make improvements… (that) we could kill one of our cars or (deliberately) damage one of our cars?

“It’s completely irrational and no one in the paddock could do something like that. We are fighting for the championship and every weekend we try to score points more than the others, how can you imagine us saying: “Lewis, we don't want to score points with him anymore?

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“For me, this is completely irrational and completely out of reach of the person who is doing my business,” said the Ferrari boss.

Hamilton has just 15 races remaining with his long-time sponsor Mercedes, and given his record against his teammate this season, the British driver's current shortage of race wins is likely to rise from 54 to 69 before he dons the red Maranello suit. .

After learning that Adrian Newey was leaving Red Bull, Lewis made an impassioned plea to the F1 car design guru to join him at Ferrari. This now also appears to be a disappointment for the seven-time champion, as the latest talk in the paddock suggests that Newey is close to signing a deal with Aston Martin or the team where he achieved his first real F1 success, at Williams.

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The British and French signed an Entente Cordiale in 1904, intended to improve the historically poor relations between their peoples. However, the spirit of competition between nations grew stronger over the years, as the Gallic country embarked on the project of building a European federation of states.

Eventually, the British decided they had had enough of top-down micromanagement from Strasbourg and Brussels and decided in 2016 to get rid of the technocrats who rule with impunity and manage their own affairs. Whether or not this decision was successful was overshadowed by a global pandemic and then a cost of living crisis imposed on the world when Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine… READ MORE