Mercedes: Driving a bad car has not been easy for Hamilton, who was born to win races
Mercedes' trackside engineering director,Andrew Shovlin has admitted that launching the "third bad car in a row" with the W15 has been "difficult" for Lewis Hamilton.
Following a two-year hiatus, Lewis Hamilton re-established himself as a Formula One race winner at Silverstone four weeks ago. The seven-time world champion, who now has a total of 105 F1 race victories, last won at the 2021 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix before his ninth Silverstone triumph.
The Briton ended a 56-race wait for a victory at the British Grand Prix. After his emotional win at Silverstone, Hamilton admitted to having doubts about whether he would be able to win again.
Mercedes' trackside engineering director,Andrew Shovlin acknowledged that Hamilton's self-doubt was "inevitable" after a series of uncompetitive cars.
“I mean, it’s inevitable, and I think the whole team has had a period of that. When we launched our third bad car in a row, we’re all wondering, why have we made that mistake? And how have we done that again?”
“So it does have you questioning what you’re doing, and I think the fact that we haven’t had a competitive car made it difficult for Lewis, because he is a driver who is just born to win races.”
“And it’s been a tough few years for him having had so many difficult results. It’s not like he’s had all bad races, because he’s got George, who’s an incredibly fast driver and a very difficult person to beat and Lewis has had his fair share of races where he’s been ahead of George – it’s just that we weren’t able to win because we didn’t have the car to win.”
Despite his decade-long run of success with Mercedes, Hamilton is about to kick off the last stint of his career with the German marque. Having announced his shock departure from Mercedes in February, the 105-time F1 race winner is set to join Ferrari next year.
“When Lewis announced he was going to Ferrari, all of us felt like ‘well, let’s make this year one to remember, and let’s go out with something to celebrate,'”
“So the entire team was hoping that this would be a year that we could get back to winning races and have some results because it would be a real shame if that absolutely incredible chapter of Lewis’ career that is at Mercedes, if that were to sort of finish with three winless seasons on the trot.”
“We’re happy for him, we’re happy for the team, but there’s nothing that we want more than for that chapter with Lewis to finish with a happy ending," concluded Shovlin.
