1 Day after Signing $127,000,000 Deal with Mercedes, Lewis Hamilton Fires Gloomy Update

Any F1 driver would be ecstatic to have signed a mega $127 million multi-year contract extension, but not Lewis Hamilton. For the Brit, the time for celebration was over right after the announcement, and he was back at work. However, getting back to work, especially after the FP2 results at Monza, the Brit lost all the joy of his contract extension. Hamilton was the seventeenth fastest during the second practice session, which gave him a sense of doom for the upcoming qualifying session. The practice session, in addition to the events of Zandvoort, forced the Mercedes man into a gloomy confession.

Mercedes not only ruined Hamilton’s qualifying during the Dutch GP, but they also put a dent in his race during the start. Hamilton’s P6 race result was not indicative of the same. Now, at Monza, after the engineers made the regularly scheduled FP2 changes which resulted in the abysmal FP2 outing, Hamilton has a gloomy outlook toward the Italian GP qualifying. As quoted by F1 Maximaal, he confessed to hoping to make it to Q3 with the car’s current state to the media.

“We need to work on that overnight, and then we’ll come back tomorrow, as always, and hope the car does better. I hope we can get into the top ten,” said Hamilton. “It would be nice if we can make it to Q3, and then we’ll see how it goes. At our current speed, I don’t know how easy it can be to get to Q3. We work on that at night. This morning we were easily in the top three so I cross my fingers and hope we can get there again.” (Translated by Google)

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Hamilton has never been shy about expressing his true feelings and gloomy predictions. However, with history as proof, the Mercedes car is set up in the best way possible for the FP3 session and the qualifying.

Although the Q2 exit and the strategic calls in the Dutch GP race should be cause for concern. As rightly summed up by Peter Windsor, “That was a complete mess.”

Peter Windsor fires brutal criticism at Mercedes for ruining the races of Lewis Hamilton and George Russell in Zandvoort

The fact George Russell started the race from P3 and finished it at P17 should tell you enough but allow us to elaborate. After the unexpected showers at the start of the Dutch GP, Mercedes’s late strategic calls put both Hamilton and Russell to the back of the grid at the start.

The W14 was faster than Aston Martin and Alpine with the right calls Mercedes could’ve put both their drivers on the podium. However, the strategic calls to put inters while the track drying up, among others, ruined the race for both drivers. Peter Windsor highlighted exactly that while criticizing the Brackley outfit.

Windsor said, “If you didn’t come in in the first lap, stay out, especially if you’ve got two guys [in competitive positions]. For me, that’s what they should be saying. ‘Why didn’t we back ourselves, stay out there, and just live with it?’ Because then this very fast car (the W14)—faster than the Aston Martin and the Alpine—that Toto is talking about might well have taken Lewis to the podium. And maybe even George.”

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This scenario let Mercedes go of a potential double podium. Let’s hope the team has learned from its mistakes in Zandvoort and can get its strategy right in Monza. A statement we don’t write about Mercedes often.