Hamilton's Setup Change Claims Questioned By Ex-F1 Technical Director Anderson
F1Sunday, 28 April 2024 at 18:00
Former F1 Techincal Director Gary Anderson questioned Lewis Hamilton's recent reasoning for underperforming compared to his teammate.
We are almost through 25% of the 2024 season, and seven-time World Champion Lewis Hamilton (who is switching teams next year) is losing by quite some margin in the head-to-head battle with his teammate George Russell.
While the 39-year-old outperformed his teammate both in the sprint shootout and the sprint race, the Grand Prix statistics do not speak in his favor at all.
As it stands, Hamilton has outqualified Russell only once and hasn't yet beaten him in the race. It was quite common to hear the number 44 driver say after the race weekend that he experimented with the car's setup and chose the wrong one.
However, Gary Andreson suggests the seven-time World Champion is probably searching for something that cannot be found. Writing in his column for De Telegraph, he said:
"Hamilton still seems to be searching for that magic bullet that will suddenly see him leap to the front. Well, in all my years in motorsport I have never seen that happen."
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"Mercedes have had a fundamental problem with their car since the start of 2022 and no amount of setup changes will fix it. It should always be about optimising what you have at your disposal, if you can do this it gives you a baseline to work from."
The former technical director seems to see the described setup changes as mere excuses that have to stop at one point. What's more, he doesn't believe these changes are as significant as Hamilton and his team principal, Toto Wolff, make them seem.
"The excuses must stop at some point. The decision-making process on Hamilton's side of the garage has to be questioned. When Hamilton talks of these out-there setups, they are probably not as wild as he would have us believe."
The 39-year-old Mercedes driver himself said after the 2024 Chinese Grand Prix that he has to stop experimenting with different setups. His next chance to show what he's got comes during the Sprint weekend in Miami next week.
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