Lewis Hamilton “Not Happy” With Mercedes as Toto Wolff Exposes Key “Weakness”

Apart from the Australian Grand Prix putting homeground favorites Daniel Ricciardo and Oscar Piastri in the spotlight, even Lewis Hamilton’s performance will be under scrutiny. Hamilton is the only current driver to win at Melbourne more than once (in 2008 and 2015). But looking at Mercedes’ current state, the third victory looks far-fetched, and even Hamilton believes that Toto Wolff & Co. are far from their true potential.

In a press conference ahead of the Australian GP, Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff said, as quoted by Mirror, “It’s encouraging to see the potential in the W15 but there are also clear areas of improvement. We have looked competitive in low and medium-speed corners but high-speed has been a weakness so far,” he added.

While his star driver agreed on the fact that the W15 has a lot of potential, translating that into performance is what he highlighted as their key issue. “I do think we have an amazing car and it has a lot of potential in it,” Lewis Hamilton told F1.com. “We just haven’t maximized it through set-up, through mistakes and we are obviously not happy with the performance in the first two races but there is potential we haven’t extracted yet.”

He then set his expectations for the race weekend ahead, saying, “So, everyone’s focus is understanding the car. I feel positive for this weekend, there is a long way ahead.“

While Toto Wolff knows that this is Hamilton’s last hurrah with the team he won six drivers’ championships with, Now, the question is, can he make it a memorable one for the entire team? Thinking that far could be counterproductive. So let’s look at the current race weekend in Melbourne.

What can Lewis Hamilton expect at the Australian GP from his team?

The 7-time champion’s Australian GP prospects look better. Along with him getting more accustomed to the W15 in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, the Silver Arrows have planned something different than what they’ve been doing. Their trackside engineering director, Andrew Shovlin, revealed some details for the same.

“We will come up with a plan for how we approach free practice in Melbourne,” Shovlin said. “But it’s not just based on what we did in Jeddah. There’s a lot of work going on within the aerodynamics department, vehicle dynamics department. We’re trying to design some experiments there that will hopefully give us a direction that’s good for performance.”

Read More: Oscar Piastri: “Maybe He [Lewis Hamilton] Just Doesn’t Like Me”

Lewis Hamilton has secured the pole eight times in Melbourne. And this is the circuit where he got Mercedes their first podium for the year, 2023. Now, an exceptional repeat is what all Mercedes (and, to some extent, even Ferrari fans) are hoping for.