At the 2022 Azerbaijan Grand Prix, George Russell once again beat Lewis Hamilton both in qualifying and in the race, something that is already starting to become a habit this season and is reflected in the drivers’ standings, with 37 points. of difference between them.
In Baku, it wasn’t just the rebound that slowed the seven-time world champion. There were other technical reasons why Hamilton was once again the slowest Mercedes driver.
The veteran British driver explained that he lost “three and a half tenths only on the straights” compared to Russell’s times on Saturday, so if it were real, he would surely have been ahead, since the difference between the two was about two tenths.
However, Hamilton acknowledged that there were other technical reasons for the car that made the difference with his teammate. The #44 had “an experimental part” on the car that he didn’t want to go into detail about, as well as “different suspension at the rear.”
The German team wanted to try a different setup on its Mercedes W13, “but it turned out to be the wrong one,” Hamilton said after the race. That is why Russell , for example, suffered fewer rebounds. “He didn’t have any back pain from it, but also his back is 13 years younger than mine!”
Hamilton sees no clear solution for Mercedes in F1 2022
After this unsuccessful test, one more for the Brackley team so far this season, Lewis Hamilton is not sure about the future of the team for the next races: “The car has a lot of potential, for sure, but we won’t be able to watch it until we remove these bounces.”
According to the British driver, Mercedes should also turn around its own design philosophy with the extremely narrow sidepods: “Our car looks very different from the others visually, I have to analyze it to see if we are doing well or not.”
At the moment, the team with the silver bullets is in third position in the constructors’ standings, just 38 points behind Ferrari, who are in second place, numbers that in principle should not set off alarm bells, but when analyzed more closely, the real difference is much larger than the results say.
