Despite Lewis Hamilton’s Spectacular Quality, Toto Wolff & Co. Fail to Convert Massive Opportunity

One does not become a 7x World Champion and bag 103 wins without special abilities. Many may refer to Lewis Hamilton as Super Human. Whatever the 38-year-old has achieved in his F1 career is almost impossible to replicate. However, despite one of these thousands of special abilities that Lewis Hamilton possesses, Mercedes still wasn’t able to capitalize on the massive opportunity when it presented itself. What is the massive opportunity?

Lewis Hamilton and George Russell’s Qatar GP crash was the highlight for the Qatar GP. So much so that Max Verstappen winning the championship was subdued by the Mercedes story. While most people focus on the power struggle at Mercedes and the civil war that might’ve been started because of the crash, Tom Clarkson chose to shift his focus to the bigger picture and highlight the opportunity missed by Mercedes. 

Carlos Sainz was ruled out of the Qatar GP even before the race started as a result of a fuel system problem. Mercedes, who are within touching distance of Ferrari for P2 in the championship, had a splendid chance of increasing their lead. Nonetheless, as Tom Clarkson praised Lewis Hamilton for his spatial awareness and clean racing, he also took a dig at Toto Wolff and Co. for not capitalizing on the opportunity to increase the points lead. 

According to the F1 Nation podcast, Tom Clarkson said, “Lewis’ spatial awareness, he’s such a clean racing driver that I think they can be confident that that wouldn’t happen again. But what it emphasized really is that the battle for P2 in the championship is so close between Mercedes and Ferrari. Just the 28 points separating. Mercedes second and Ferrari third.”

Clarkson added, “And when you have a race like the one we’ve had where Carlos Sainz doesn’t start and the pace of the Ferrari wasn’t that great, Leclerc coming home in 5th place, you really have to capitalize on moments like that. And that is what Mercedes haven’t been able to do.”

Read More: “This Team Is a Joke”: Fans Reject Mercedes Boss’ Attempt to Whitewash Lewis Hamilton-George Russell Disaster

It is indeed true. While Hamilton took the blame for the crash and it can be categorized as a lap 1 racing incident, it doesn’t change the fact that Mercedes lost the opportunity to score big points. Hamilton could’ve been a little more careful. Let’s see what the Briton had to say about what actually caused the incident.

Lewis Hamilton’s eagerness cost Mercedes big time

Lewis Hamilton started the race on the soft rubber. As we saw in the Sprint race, the soft tires were great off the start but dropped off super quick. Hamilton, who started P3, wanted to negate the long-term disadvantage of the soft tire by offsetting and passing Russell & Verstappen on the start. The Brit did get a great start, but his eagerness got the better of him as he didn’t leave Russell enough space.

According to Sky Italy, Lewis Hamilton, while explaining what caused the incident, said, “I was trying to get ahead of both of them and just an unfortunate situation. I had the worst tire of everyone around me, so I needed to try and get ahead. Big risk, big penalty. So this is definitely unfortunate and I’m sure he was frustrated at the moment like I was.”

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What do you make of Tom Clarkson’s comments?