Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes who challenged the F1 Emilia Romagna GP sprint on Saturday, April 23 ended up dropping the position instead of recovering. The absolute champion of the V6 era hasn’t even found a light, and can’t see the exit of the dark tunnel.
Imola on Friday, when the qualifying was held, was hit by cold conditions with rain, but on Saturday the temperature and road surface temperature nearly doubled. Mercedes, who lost the double Q2, ranked high in FP2 with 1-4 against the background of different weather conditions, but could not raise the position including George Russell in the sprint.
Hamilton on the 13th grid allowed Lance Stroll and Yuki Tsunoda to overtake on the first lap. Although he barely made a stroll, he couldn’t threaten Yuki Tsunoda and finished in 14th place, dropping one position.
“It was another humiliating experience,” said Mercedes representative Toto Wolff, admitting that this was the “lowest day” of the four races of the season. It’s probably spurred by the fact that we haven’t been able to improve the popping that we’ve been suffering from since the Bahrain test, even though we’ve brought in a number of minor updates.
In the sprint, the pure performance of the car is required more than the final. Since it has been shortened to 21 laps, strategic opportunities due to degradation and pit stops cannot be expected.
Furthermore, Imola is a difficult course to overtake, and overtaking is difficult without a considerable performance advantage. Even if the pace was constant, he didn’t have the power to compete with the W13, which was inferior in top speed.
Having said that, it was a shock to drop the ranking even further if the position was kept. Hamilton, who finished the race with helplessness, said he had nothing more to do for himself.
“Well, I missed a point … I can’t say I was able to recover because I lost my position. Unfortunately. It’s been a long time throughout the season, but the feel of the car is not the best (bitter smile).”
“We are facing problems, but I can’t do anything about it. The only thing I’ve done so far is to try to do the best job I can.”
“Some weekends work and some don’t, but it’s clear that we’re not fighting for the championship, because the fight is for the top ten.”
The seven-time F1 World Champion will reach the final of Round 4 50 points behind championship leader Charles Leclerc. The performance gap with Red Bull and Ferrari was significant, and Hamilton admitted that he had virtually given up on the title this season.
“We know we have a lot of points left, and in theory it’s still possible, but we have to be realistic. The problem we’re having isn’t small.”
“They’re a few seconds, and in the worst case, a second or more ahead. We can’t fix the problem in the next race and we haven’t found a solution yet.”
“Even if a solution is found, it can take months to design and manufacture.”
Hamilton also said, “Early in the season, one of the questions asked to me was,’What if I make a mistake?’ And’We don’t do that. We can’t make a mistake.’ But that may be the case. “
Arrogance is often said to be the cause of failure, but James Allison is reminded of the Mercedes camp’s remarks early in the season when it was completely unreadable.
Early in the year, Mercedes Chief Technology Officer misinterprets the regulationIt is inevitable that some teams will have a tragic seasonIt showed the view. That’s definitely Mercedes so far.
In the final of the F1 Round 4 Emilia Romagna GP on April 25, Sprint winner Max Verstappen (Red Bull) will be in pole position and Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) will be in second place in the front row.
The 63-lap race at the Imola Circuit will be blacked out at 15:00 local time and 22:00 Japan time.