Since the start of the 2022 season, Mercedes has been far from the standards of previous years, and Lewis Hamiltonjust like his teammate George Russelloften evolve far from the fight for the top places.
It is particularly during qualifying that the Mercedes have shown a performance deficit. This year, Lewis Hamilton has often conceded a significant deficit on pole, regularly between 0.6 seconds and one second, depending on the circuits. In Australia, the Briton was stopped in Q2, while he was not even able to get through the Q1 phase in China, where he was relegated to a full second off the best time over a lap.
In recent races, however, Mercedes and Hamilton seem to have made up a good part of their gap on the leading teams. In Canada, while his teammate Russell took pole, the seven-time world champion certainly had to be content with 7th place on the grid, but he was only 0.280 seconds behind his compatriot, who had set a time equal to that of of Verstappen. In the race, Hamilton finished 4th behind Russell.
And Barcelona confirmed the progress made by the Mercedes, Lewis Hamilton taking 3rd place on the grid ahead of his garage neighbor (0.320 from pole), before signing his first podium of the season.
For Hamilton, the latest results attest to the return to form of Mercedes, and the long work carried out by the Brackley team to return to the level of the best.
Lewis Hamilton welcomes Mercedes’ progress
Photo de: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images
“There has been a huge amount of analysis and requests for information from the team on how we can improve our weak areas,” he said before the Austrian GP. “It’s just a matter of tires, and we have to continue to improve our processes from session to session.”
“Generally speaking, when we get to qualifying, things change a little bit. The car is obviously lighter, you are much more in the DRS. Time will tell. But I think we found something. Now we have to try to build on that.”
Lewis Hamilton believes that, in addition to trying to resolve the balance problems on its single-seaters, Mercedes still needs to deepen its understanding of the behavior of the tires on the W15s.
“The car, from an aerodynamic point of view, is more on the razor’s edge,” he continued. “It’s not as easy to balance the mechanical aspect and the aerodynamic balance between high and low speeds. Getting that setup is difficult.”
“But tire temperature and how you do your final laps are key things, which every team tries to solve. Just look at the Ferraris in Montreal, who failed to get out of Q2 for example. This can only be due to tire temperature, because they have a fast car and they won the race [à Monaco] before that. This shows that tires can easily fail. It’s easy to put too much strain on the tires. The gums are definitely more sensitive, I think, than any other season I can remember having.”
We all need good days like this in our lives.
Regardless, Hamilton remains on a good run, with a fourth place in Canada and a third place in Spain, a race which helped to further boost the morale of the troops at Mercedes.
“It feels good to have races like this,” continue Hamilton. “Sometimes you don’t get the chance to have a race like that, where you can get your elbows out and make some really fun, tough passes. But it was a really good race, a fun race for me.”
“Barcelona always offers good racing and it’s a race that has been with me for many years. We all need good days like that in our lives, just to remind us that we’re still here and the flame is definitely there.[We]just have to keep feeding it.” [Nousdevonsjustecontinueràl’alimenter”
