Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes F1 W15, walks away from his car after retiring in the gravel
Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes would like nothing more than to end their 12 years together on a high.
However, based on recent form, there is a very real risk that their time may finish not with a bang, but with a whimper.
If things continue like they did in Brazil last weekend, where Hamilton qualified 14th and finished 10th while team-mate George Russell started on the front row and fought for the win, then there will not be much to smile about when the curtain comes down in Abu Dhabi.
Hamilton’s own verdict after the Brazilian Grand Prix was pretty damning, as he labelled the race as “crap” on Sunday night.
He added: “Yesterday [Saturday] was terrible. Today [Sunday] was terrible. Yesterday was bad. Qualifying was bad. Sprint race was bad. The car’s just been bad all weekend.”
He further fuelled intrigue about the scale of the struggles enveloping him as he delivered a cryptic message over the radio straight after the chequered flag.
“That was a disaster of a weekend, guys,” he said on the cooldown lap. “That’s the worst the car has ever been. But thank you for contributing to try, and great job to all the guys at the pitstop.
“If this is the last time I get to perform it was a shame it wasn’t great – but grateful for you.”
Some interpreted those comments as a revelation that Brazil was going to be Hamilton’s last race, although that is certainly wide of the mark.
And, although it is not clear exactly what he was referring to, his remark about the pit crew on a day when they were not actually called into action, was more likely a reference to the fact that some personnel were having their last race appearance of 2024 in Brazil due to the shuffling around of staff to cope with the intense schedule for triple headers.
The root of the problem
While the current performances on the track are not great, what is perhaps the biggest issue right now is that neither Mercedes nor Hamilton had an immediate answer after Brazil for what had gone wrong, despite there being some clear symptoms.
What is at play is a repeat of what he has been battling since the summer break, when his form took a big dip from that spell in July when he took two wins from three races.
Primarily, the problem appears to be about Hamilton having a lack of confidence in the car, especially its rear end.
As the above graph comparing the telemetry traces of Hamilton (blue) and Russell (red) in Q1 on Sunday morning shows clearly, there is a remarkable difference in the way the drivers were feeding in the throttle – mainly in the slower speed corners.
As the bottom trace shows, Russell could increase the accelerator consistently, whereas Hamilton’s lack of confidence is crystal clear. The loose rear end means he is constantly having to back off – and that leaves him bleeding speed and lap time.
The current generation of ground effect machinery are pretty brutal machines – running super stiff and super close to the ground – and they are not very forgiving when driving on the edge.
Some drivers are better suited to overcome an unpredictable balance, but Hamilton is finding himself put a bit more on the back foot by it.
And typically, when a driver loses faith in the rear end, it slides more – and that then compounds tyre temperature issues.
So what starts out as a small issue can quickly manifest itself into something bigger and can make two nearly identical cars vastly different in how they develop over a race stint.
As Mercedes head of trackside engineering Andrew Shovlin explained this week: “It is fair to say Lewis was struggling predominantly with a lack of rear grip.
“If we look at how he had set up his car, it is not obvious where that was coming from.
“But in the sprint race, as soon as you have got less grip and you are getting the snaps of oversteer on exit, you generate more temperature. That in itself will prolong the problem.
“As with any race, we spend a lot of time digging into the data, trying to understand it, and Lewis’ engineering crew will be working with him on this issue, trying to make sure we get to the bottom of it before Vegas.”
Hamilton’s struggles in finding a set-up he feels comfortable with have also not been helped much by Mercedes’ latest upgrade that arrived at the United States Grand Prix.
While it appears to have ticked all the boxes when it comes to deliver extra performance on track, there are some questions about it also adding some behavioural instability as well – as was witnessed by Hamilton’s race exit in Austin a day after George Russell’s qualifying crash.
And a particular weakness the car has, in dealing with successive low-speed corners, is something that has not been improved with the latest changes.
Shovlin added: “We have not had such good performance in the dry, but the issues that we are struggling with with this update are the same as the ones we were struggling with before.
“Where we tend to be weak, it is in the slow speed corners, particularly the ones where you have got one corner following into another. There is a lot of turning of the car, and that is a weakness that we need to work on.”
With sector two of Interlagos being pretty much all about interconnected slow corners, it was obvious that the Brazil event was going to potentially be more difficult than normal for the team.
Working on a solution
The only positive for Hamilton right now is that at least Russell’s performances show what is possible with the car.
And some forthcoming high-speed venues, especially Qatar, could help better expose the strengths of the W15 package rather than its weaknesses.
Hamilton has admitted that things are not easy right now, but there was no other option than to dig deeper with his team to try to find a way out of it before Abu Dhabi.
“Obviously, it’s devastating to have these bad races in the second half of the season,” he said. “But all I can say is, we’re trying.
“But it’s definitely not acceptable. It’s definitely not good enough. And we have to take accountability. I have to take accountability. But I am driving.; I am doing the best with what I’ve got.
“The car has been the worst this weekend, and I don’t know what it is. We’re going to have to find out what it is.”
That work began for Hamilton this week with some intense work at the factory to sit down with the engineers, and spend time in the simulator yesterday, to try to get some answers as to what is happening.
Las Vegas will tell us just how much those efforts have paid off.
