“It Is What It Is”: Dejected Lewis Hamilton Calls Mercedes to Action as Tensions Rise With Toto Wolff

Lewis Hamilton, one of the coolest and most collected drivers on the grid, looked extremely animated in the garage, seemingly having a heated discussion with Toto Wolff in Imola. Well, it has been that sort of a weekend, or more so, year, for the defending champions Mercedes.

Heading into the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, expectations were a tad higher than usual on Mercedes, thanks to the minor updates to the W13. Furthermore, George Russell’s podium in Melbourne last weekend was certainly a much-needed boost for the entire Brackley outfit.

However, in reality, everything seems to be going haywire for both Russell, who is currently holding onto P2 in the championship, and his veteran partner, Hamilton. Both the Mercedes drivers failed to qualify into Q3 for the first time in over 11 years, ending what has been an absolutely insane streak.

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Of course, part of the blame goes to the untimely Carlos Sainz crash, which brought out the red flags. The track was reasonably dry until then. However, only a minute after the incident, the skies opened up, dampening the track and erasing the racing line completely.

Dejected Lewis Hamilton reacts to awful Imola F1 qualifying

Following the early end to the qualifying outing in Imola, Hamilton looked extremely displeased during an interview in the paddock.

“It wasn’t a great session. Yeah, naturally it’s disappointing… Coming here with optimism, and you know everyone is working hard at the factory, things just don’t come together, yeah it’s disappointing. I think we underperformed as a team today,” he said.

“There are things we should have done we didn’t do and… Anyways, we’ll work as hard as we can to move up in the sprint race. It’ll be a difficult race, but, hopefully, tomorrow’s better.”

Also, as mentioned earlier, the Mercedes man engaged in what looked like a heated argument with the team boss. Wolff was seemingly lashing out at Hamilton before the record-equaling world champion walked through the back of the garage. When asked about this particular moment, Hamilton resisted talking about it.

“It’s all internal stuff. I don’t want to share that but, we’ll just keep working. It is what it is,” Hamilton said.

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Overall, an awry end to Friday for the whole of Mercedes with very few positives to take away from both FP1 and qualifying. However, can the British duo break the poor run of form by pulling off a miraculous outing in Sprint on Saturday? Well, we’ll know soon enough!