Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton have not got the best car this season and are not competing in front as they used to. Jean Alesi takes a sly dig at Mercedes’ performance this year.
Former F1 star Jean Alesi believes that Lewis Hamilton driving an uncompetitive car this year is “embarrassing”. Lewis Hamilton is winless so far this season and Mercedes also looks too far from the front runners, Ferrari and Red Bull.
The new ground effect introduced the bouncing of cars caused by the phenomenon named “porpoising’. This affected many cars but impacts on W13 were severe. The bouncing was so great that Hamilton was unable to get out of the car in Baku within the prescribed time limit by FIA, after the race.
On a few occasions, Hamilton was even the slowest in midfield while other times he was not even competing for points.
Nevertheless, lately, Silver Arrows have better understood the phenomenon as the bouncing on their cars is looking considerably lesser. Moreover, W13 is producing outright pace capable of fighting at least for podiums and even wins on good days.
British GP, French GP, and Hungarian GP clearly showed that Mercedes was back on track. Moreover, Lewis Hamilton is also back in form. Hamilton who stayed behind Russell for most of the campaign has shown outright pace ahead of his teammate.
Lewis Hamilton finished on P2 in the last 2 outings at Paul Ricard and Budapest.
But still, Jean Alesi believes that Mercedes isn’t able to provide a car worthy enough of winning a race for the 7-time World Champion:
“It’s easy for me to say but everybody was shocked by [their start.],” Alesi said. “When they presented the car in Bahrain everybody said ‘oh my God, they have made something very special and they’re going to be untouchable.’
“But lap after lap they found out the car was nowhere. And to see Lewis Hamilton driving a car like that was sometimes embarrassing because Lewis is a seven-time world champion.
“But to see his capacity to still improve the car, that was impressive
“In Hungary, it was fantastic to see George on pole position and Lewis fighting towards the front.”
Hamilton believes that he will still manage to bag at least one win this season too. With 9 more races left, Hamilton said:
“We’re definitely going to get a win this year. That’s something I couldn’t have told you before the race. So it feels great.”
With incoming regulations tweaks from Belgium GP, the frontrunners might lose some pace. People still believe that Mercedes might be the one to benefit the most from the changes. We will know it next week.
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