Benched Lewis Hamilton Provokes Odd Response From Mercedes F1 Boss at French GP: “He Sat on My Seat…”

It was indeed a bit weird to see Lewis Hamilton not driving a race car on a race weekend. In the first practice session at the French Grand Prix in Circuit Paul Ricard, the 7-time world champion was on the sidelines.

Mercedes reserve driver Nyck de Vries replaced him for the FP1 session. Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff revealed he was also surprised to see Hamilton sitting in his chair before the session when he arrived. But he also mentioned one interesting thing that the Mercedes driver did to help de Vries in the session.

” I was a bit confused when I came in. He sat on my seat. And I thought, why are you not in the car? Then obviously I realized. But it was interesting he was coaching Nyck. He was helping him with the overlay and it was quite interesting to see,” said Wolff.

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It was earlier in the week announced that the touch driver would replace the 7-time world champion in the FP1 session.

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De Vries is quite an accomplished driver in his own right. He won Formula 2 in 2019 and also is the current Formula E champion. He’s driving Hamilton’s car as it is mentioned that the reserve driver must get at least 2 sessions throughout the season in the car.

“Nyck is replacing Lewis in first practice this weekend as part of the allocated sessions for young drivers this year. So we are looking forward to seeing how he gets on,” said Wolff earlier in the week.

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The British driver will be returning to his seat from the FP2 session onwards. But it is quite interesting to hear Mercedes‘s team boss’s comments on how Hamilton was helping his young charge.

Not many would have predicted that sitting on the pit wall, he would be doing such a thing for a young driver. But let’s see how he goes on when he gets into the car and performs as compared to de Vries. He would have certainly looked at all the data that the Dutch driver garnered in his car in the FP1 session.