Can Hamilton get back into the fight?
Some are claiming the championship is all about who has the fastest car but, as Leclerc found out, mistakes can also play a major part
Title rivals Ferrari and Red Bull dominated the headlines after the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix at the Imola circuit, with world champion Max Verstappen in the Red Bull beating championship leader Charles Leclerc in his Ferrari.
Leclerc wasn’t even on the podium, as Sergio Perez made it a Red Bull 1-2, while a spin late in the race saw Leclerc come home sixth.
For a race in the heart of Italy, a crowd of 64,000 were mostly supporting Ferrari, known colloquially as the tifosi. Leclerc wanted to impress them, but instead he embarrassed himself by making a mistake and has vowed to not let it happen again.
“It’s one of those mistakes where it is a bit more the mental approach you’ve had at that particular moment of the race,” Leclerc told Motosport.com. “But I’ve always been strong in knowing exactly which particular feeling I felt at what moment of the race and know how to correct it. So yeah, it’s a mistake, but I’ll learn from it.”
He was not prepared to concede the mistake came because he was under pressure running behind the two Red Bulls and trying to stay ahead of Lando Norris in the McLaren.
“Obviously we’ve had pressure not only during the race but for the whole weekend and I don’t think I’ve done many mistakes before,” Leclerc added. “It was a mistake that cost me a lot and I’ll learn from it. But no, on my side there was no particular added pressure whatsoever.”
Leclerc will take a 27-point lead over Verstappen going into this weekend’s inaugural Miami Grand Prix on a street circuit, so neither driver will the advantage of circuit knowledge.
The 19-turn circuit is 5.412 km long and they will race around the Hard Rock Stadium, the home of NFL team the Miami Dolphins. The Ferrari and Mercedes teams have suffered at speed with a bobbing motion that has been called “porpoising” but might get called “dolphining” just for this circuit!
The Red Bull car has not experienced the same problem and following the Red Bull 1-2 finish at Imola, Sergio Perez predicts his team will be the one to beat.
“We still have a lot of problems to solve, but the main thing is that we are competitive and Red Bull is set to dominate the next few years with these new regulations,” Perez claimed in a recent interview. “We should be leading both the Drivers’ and Constructors’ titles. It’s been a difficult start, but the team has worked hard to keep up with Ferrari, we’ve cut several points off Ferrari.”
The battle between Red Bull and Ferrari seems set to continue all season, but the biggest surprise in the championship, albeit after only four races, is the performance, or rather the lack of, eight-time Constructors’ champions, Mercedes.
Although third on the point’s table, they
are 57 and 46 points behind Ferrari and Red Bull respectively. Their position on the table flatters the team in reality, because as team principal Toto Wolff acknowledges, they are not in the title hunt.
“We are four races in and this marks the low of the first four races,” Wolff said after the Imola race, having apologised to Hamilton who only finished 13th, for giving him a car that was “undriveable”.
“It is obvious we are not anywhere near the fight at the front. It should be pretty unrealistic to claim we have a slot among the frontrunners fighting for the championship.”
What Wolff didn’t mention was that despite the car’s relatively poor performance compared to the cars the team has produced for eight consecutive years, is that George Russell in the other Mercedes finished fourth and is 21 points ahead of Hamilton, having beaten the seven-time world champion in three of the four races held. As a result, Hamilton now has some critics amongst former drivers, turned F1 commentators.
1997 world champion Jacques Villeneuve is no shrinking violet when it comes to dishing out brickbats about driver or team performances.
“Will Hamilton still be there in two, three years?” he wrote in his Formule1.nl column.
“Will he even reach the end of the season? You can’t see into someone’s head. You can be down and depressed or you can be unable to deal with no longer winning. Then maybe it’s time to decide life is better without racing. We’ve been surprised in the past-it’s happened that champions have sometimes just had enough.”
Villeneuve didn’t mention any names, but the most obvious recent retirement was that of Hamilton’s Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg, who five days after beating Hamilton for the 2016 title, announced his retirement.
Alain Prost announced his retirement during the press conference following the 1993 Portuguese GP after securing his fourth world title, while Sir Jackie Stewart called it a day after winning his third world title in 1973. Stewart had witnessed his teammate Francois Cevert lose his life in a crash during qualifying for the USGP at Watkins Glen and decided not to race the following day or ever again.
There is no indication Hamilton will walk away from F1 anytime soon, but Villeneuve says that if he is not winning and Russell continues to beat him, things could change.
“At Mercedes, they now in any event need to learn to lose. For years, they drove everyone into the ground. If someone got closer, they just opened the throttle,” Villeneuve noted.
“This year, they don’t have that advantage anymore. George Russell is doing a good job in the role of underdog. He learned this at Williams, while Hamilton has always had something to fight for.”
Villeneuve says Wolff’s radio message to Hamilton at Imola stating the team were responsible for the car, was an indication that Wolff has trouble controlling himself and that a “bad result for Russell doesn’t generate criticism but for Hamilton it does”.
Former Williams driver, Ralf Schumacher, says it isn’t down to luck: “[Hamilton] has to ask himself why George Russell is so much faster than him. A 13th place is of course not Hamilton’s ambition. He has to admit to himself that Russell is the better driver right now. If this continues in the next few weeks, it will be exciting in the team. There could be changes in the ranking.”
Red Bull adviser Helmut Marko stirs up controversy with his outspoken comments, as he did after observing Verstappen lap Hamilton at Imola.
“He was lapped by us so maybe he should have stopped last year, he is thinking maybe,” Marko quipped.
That comment had former driver and now Sky F1 presenter Johnnie Herbert, calling it “a cheap shot”.
“After everything that happened last year,
what a battle there was between Max and Lewis, and of course Red Bull and Mercedes… it went down to the wire, the race at the end of the year was completely and utterly wrong, but the man who dominated that last part of the year was Lewis Hamilton.
“So, it just shows he was on fire at the end of last year. Would they (Red Bull) want him in their car? Yes, they would, but they know he’s a big threat to them once Mercedes get everything together and start battling for those race win again.”
Red Bull boss Christian Horner agrees that Hamilton will bounce back.
“He’s obviously had a horrible weekend, but he is still an eight-time world champion…seven-time! I forgot Nico Rosberg won,” Horner said. “He hasn’t forgotten how to drive in the last four races so at some point they will sort their issues out and he will become a factor.”
Fernando Alonso could be forgiven for thinking that comment applies to him, given the bad luck he has had in the first four races, being knocked out of the Imola race by a spinning Mick Schumacher.
Alonso is not a Hamilton ally but has a clear view on why he is no longer winning. “It’s Formula 1, it has been like this always,” Alonso suggested.
“When [Ayrton] Senna won the championship and races he had the fastest car. When I won the championship, I had the fastest car. Michael [Schumacher] had the fastest car. Lewis broke all the records and pole positions because he had the fastest car. Today, Lewis is driving super well and he’s P13. It’s Formula 1.”
Alonso is also of the view that the new regulations, which many have lauded, have not yet improved the racing spectacle.
“There is no race at the moment,” Alonso suggests. “It is like fighting with Lewis last year, or Verstappen. They start last and they finished on the podium still, so there is not much to fight.”
Former driver Gerhard Berger, who thinks that Russell “will soon get on Hamilton’s nerves” doesn’t agree with Alonso’s take on that the new regulations haven’t worked.
“Hats off to Ross Brawn [F1 managing director] ... he cars look better, the drivers can overtake, the races are exciting.”
It remains to be seen if there is an exciting fight on the streets in Miami and whether Hamilton can be part of it.