James Allison’s “Excuses” for “Sabotaging” Lewis Hamilton Renews Fans’ Anger Towards Mercedes

The theory of Mercedes “sabotaging” Lewis Hamilton at the Canadian GP is worsening. The 7-time champion encountered unusual challenges in Montreal, more importantly, when it counted. His W15 was flying in the practice sessions and his teammate George Russell couldn’t fathom why. But qualifying and the race witnessed a drop in performance. In the team’s post-race debrief, Technical Director James Allison attempted to defend Mercedes’ decisions that let Hamilton down. However, he seems to have dug a bigger hole than before.

Notably, Russell topped the charts in the Canadian GP, qualifying, and taking his second career pole position. But Hamilton, with the same machinery, finished P7. He hinted at foul play in his garage, blaming the unusually low tire temperatures for his failure. Facing an uphill task on race day, he made it up to P3 only for his plan to be foiled by Mercedes’ tire strategy.

The Silver Arrows put Russell on the quicker Medium tires but switched Hamilton onto the Hards. This allowed Russell a free pass on his half-a-second slower teammate for a podium finish. Addressing this questionable call, James Allison said the Hard would’ve been ‘unquestionably’ quicker than 12, 13-lap older Mediums on the driver ahead of him. “So while he (Hamilton) might have preferred a new Medium, there weren’t any new Mediums. That wasn’t an option,” he added. “The only new tire we had was a Hard, and that was gonna be quicker than anything ahead of him.”

Alas, the results and timesheets proved otherwise. Moreover, Allison’s explanation has intensified the criticism rather than subdued it.

Lewis Hamilton army renews their attack on Mercedes after James Allison’s “PR” justification

After getting out-qualified by Russell at the Monaco GP, Hamilton gave up on defending Mercedes’ poor performance. He declared that he doesn’t expect to do better than his 26-year-old teammate in qualifying this year, hinting at Toto Wolff & Co’s partiality towards Russell. A landslide followed in Canada as Hamilton called it “one of the worst races” of his career. Suddenly, all fingers pointed towards Mercedes, intentionally letting Russell finish in a higher position.

The comments section under Mercedes’ post of Allison justifying their wrong call went wild. One user straight-up blamed the Brackley outfit for their horrible operations. “And here comes the excuses for ruining Lewis’s race. Stop sabotaging Lewis!“

Another fan amplified this emotion, accusing Mercedes of trying to give a PR-oriented response. They even highlighted how the team denied Hamilton’s ask to be put on the much-quicker Soft tires. “So we are ignoring he wanted softs? Shouldn’t have done this if you were going to play pr, this is worse than not saying anything”.

One fan went directly after Allison for allegedly veiling the actual reason Mercedes is ‘screwing’ Hamilton over in his last year with them. “James is very good at saying a whole lot of nothing. “He’s leaving so we screwed him”. Thats what he meant to say”, they lashed out, irritated.

Another user hopped onto the Allison-slamming train. They questioned as to why Mercedes’ Technical Director, who has no say in the live race strategy, is being pushed into the firing line for justifying someone else’s mistake. “Why asking that to James ? he is not in charge of the strategy”.

Another fan decided to call a spade a spade. Summarizing every other fan’s frustration, they highlighted Mercedes’ allegedly glaring bias towards their lead driver for next year. “The decision was made to make George look good…. Lol”

The only saving grace for Mercedes can be if their strategy allows Lewis Hamilton to stand on the podium when F1 returns to Spain next weekend to kick off the first European triple header. What are your thoughts on this fiasco? Let us know in the comments below.