Toto Wolff Holds Lewis Hamilton’s “Extreme” Decision Responsible for Poor Showing at the Chinese Grand Prix

No one but Lewis Hamilton himself was responsible for ruining his Chinese Grand Prix weekend. That’s what Toto Wolff had to say after the race. Hamilton had a rather unusually good start to the weekend by Mercedes’ 2024 standards. He claimed a front-row start in the Sprint Qualifying in wet conditions on Friday and managed to secure a second-place finish in the Sprint behind Max Verstappen.

However, as per the revised 2024 Sprint Weekend format, the teams and drivers were allowed to make changes to their cars between the Sprint and the Qualifying on Saturday. And that’s where it all went wrong for Lewis Hamilton. When Hamilton got knocked out of the first part of qualifying with only the 18th fastest time, he explained that he had experimented with the setup of his car after the Sprint.

He went in a different direction than George Russell, and that’s what, according to him, led to a poor performance in qualifying. Hamilton’s struggles continued in the opening stint of the race on Sunday on soft tires, and he could barely manage to get inside the points-paying positions in P9, which he said was the best he could have achieved from 18th on the grid.

However, after the race, Toto Wolff criticized Lewis Hamilton for going too extreme with the setup of his car. “The car that we have under us is not currently fast enough,” Wolff told Sky Sports F1. “However, we must make sure that we are not trying to find a silver bullet each weekend when it comes to how we run the car; we need to focus on getting the basics right and maximizing the package we have.”

“Today, we didn’t have the car in the right window; we made too many extreme changes after the Sprint, and that made the most important part of the weekend much more challenging,“ he added. “We know that today’s result is not strong enough overall, so we must dig deep to make improvements.”

Even Hamilton’s former teammate and rival accused him of giving the ‘car setup’ excuse way too often.

Nico Rosberg calls out Lewis Hamilton for making excuses against George Russell

Hamilton has now been out-qualified by his younger teammate, George Russell, 4 to 1 in 2024. And each time Hamilton lags behind Russell, he tends to point to the setup being different on the two cars as the reason. He did the same in Bahrain, in Jeddah, and now he did it again in China.

“This afternoon we’re trying to experiment still with the car,” Hamilton said post-qualifying on Saturday. “I went one way, a long way, and he went the other way, just to see if we can find anything. That’s what we need to do at the moment. But yeah, it didn’t work.”

However, the 2016 champion and currently the Sky Sports commentator, Nico Rorberg, said that these are nothing but excuses. During the broadcast, Rosberg commented, “George has mostly been in front of Lewis. 4-1 now, in qualifying. Lewis tends to say, ‘Yeah, but we have different set-ups and such a big car difference’. That is his excuse so far this year. Each time he says that, George says, ‘The last time I checked, the cars are pretty similar. He has gone again for that. So it’s interesting.“

Do you think Lewis Hamilton should stop experimenting with the setup of his car and focus on maximizing what he already has with the W15? Share your insights in the comments below.