It’s no secret that the 2021 F1 season didn’t have the best ending, with Michael Masi losing his job, Lewis Hamilton potentially retiring and Max Verstappen picking up his first world title as a driver in F1 after the controversial scenes during the final laps of the Abu Dhabi grand prix.
However, if you cut out all of the bullish!t and drama from last season, the Hamilton/Verstappen battle was actually pretty great. It was one of the better and closer duels we’ve seen for a while in my opinion and it was because of this that I was rather excited to learn that Hamilton was staying with Mercedes.
However now with George Russell as his teammate for the 2022 season and all the early season issues, Lewis might not even be the best driver on his team.
Things haven’t quite gone to plan for Lewis Hamilton and his hunt for championship number 8 is looking increasingly less likely to come to anything but disappointment this season. All hope isn’t lost and the title isn’t COMPLETELY out of sight, not yet, the season is still young.
However, how much work is there to be done by Mercedes and in turn Hamilton to get this season back on track? Or, is it finally time for an 8 year constructors streak to come to an end?
If you’d have asked any of the experts, bookmakers, or the fans before this season started. I think it’s a pretty safe bet that nobody would have predicted that Mercedes would be in 3rd place at this point and Hamilton would be 34 points behind his Mercedes teammate George Russell, way down in sixth place.
Even looking at Formula 1 odds by BetOnline.ag and many of the other books, nobody predicted this. Honestly, it seems like every week they expect it was just a fluke and that he’ll be back amongst the podiums again. That’s not quite how this works though, is it?
So where do the problems lie for Mercedes this season?
What has gone so wrong that they are so far off the pace? It’s an incredible fall from grace really, considering they were neck and neck for the entirety of the 2021 season.
They still won the Constructors Championship and the Drivers Championship went down to the wire and now they aren’t even close in either. They are not able to compete with the likes of Red Bull and Ferrari who have established themselves as the top two teams this year.
The major problem Mercedes have been facing is porpoising. Those who haven’t been keeping up with F1 this season may be a little bit confused as to what that is exactly so in case you aren’t aware, or maybe you just want a refresher, here is a link to a video from the Sky Sports F1 YouTube channel that explains what it is with some footage to jog your memory.
The Mercedes team aren’t the only cars suffering from porpoising but it seems to be affecting these guys the most. See, porpoising tends to begin when the car accelerates quickly, so mostly on the straights and the exits of turns, but it’s affecting the Mercedes to the point where it is happening going into corners as well.
Because of this, Mercedes are having to sacrifice so much more downforce than other teams after making bigger changes to their ride height and you guessed it, that is drastically affecting their lap times!
So if they can get to the bottom of the porpoising issue and come to some kind of compromise between ride height and stability of the ride, or even some unknown solution that doesn’t affect their downforce, then they could thrust themselves back into a title race.
Hamilton: I’m out of the Championship, there’s no question about that
After all, Red Bull is still having reliability issues, Ferrari are making mistakes with their strategy and Charles Leclerc in particular is having quite a bit of bad luck.
It’s worth noting that the Mercedes team, outside of pretty much George Russell who is just happy to be in the points most races it seems, aren’t happy with where they are and unless they’re hiding their hand, it’s looking like none of the parties involved think they’re going to be joining the title fight at the front any time soon.
Toto Wolff was quoted after Imola saying “It’s obvious that we are not anywhere near the fight at the front.” and Lewis was quoted saying “I mean, I’m out of the Championship, there’s no question about that.”
Is the lack of belief real? Or are they just covering up? Trying to catch people off guard so they’re just as surprised as anybody when they rock up to Baku next Sunday and start putting in fastest laps again?
I personally find it hard to believe that they wouldn’t be able to come up with some kind of solution that doesn’t affect their lap times. Would it be the worst thing in the world if we were to have a “changing of the guard” as it were this season?
Not particularly, but it would be nice to see Lewis Hamilton out on top with the most World Driver Championship titles, as things stand he’s still tied with legend of the sport, Michael Schumacher with 7 titles.
He is out on top in career wins, pole positions, podium finishes, total points, most laps led and many more. What’s one more record to add to the pile right?
That’s going to do it for this one, what do you think? Do you think the age of Mercedes domination is over?
Can Lewis turn it around and win an unprecedented 8th World Drivers Championship this season? With every passing race it’s looking increasingly less likely, but you can’t count out one of the greatest drivers to ever grace the sport just yet.
Seven races down, 15 races to go. Anything can happen and it’s going to be incredibly interesting if Mercedes can fix their issues and Ferrari can sort their strategy out.
Who do YOU want to win the WDC & WCC? Let us know! Until next time, take care folks!
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