According to Wolff, Hamilton, who grumbled throughout the race, is also responsible for the incorrect settings

George Russell finished 6th and Lewis Hamilton finished 9th at the checkered flag in Sunday’s Chinese Grand Prix. Not only did the stars have no chance to beat Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari, they were able to beat Oscar Piastri thanks to his diffuser injury, and it didn’t take long for Fernando Alonso, who was unlucky with his tactics, to finish ahead of them.

Hamilton complained throughout his race from the start. Since he only started from the 18th place, his team tried to promote his quick position gain by putting on soft tires. It didn’t work: Hamilton dropped to 19th place, and for a while it was difficult for him to prevent the cars of the House of Commons.

He complained about the tires throughout his first stage. “I’m not fixing anything on these tires.” “These tires are horrible.” “Enough for the backs.” “That was the worst tire, mate. Jesus!” he said on the team radio.

Later he also questioned his tactics (“Why do we go further than the others before us?”), complained about the pace and drivability. “I can’t even catch up, the car is so slow” “I have no traction, mate. I don’t know what’s wrong.” “The car is sliding all over the place, like it’s damaged. Maybe it’s just the balance. It’s really bad.” “I try to turn the car in the slow corners, but it won’t turn.” he folded.

Lewis Hamilton (Photo: XPB)

Wolff: Hamilton’s direction was also wrong

Hamilton already indicated after Saturday’s qualifying that they took the wrong direction with the car’s settings after the sprint. According to him, they tried a different direction because they wanted to experiment to better understand their problems.

Team boss Toto Wolff admitted that they really raced with a badly set-up car. “No, this car is wrong. Let’s see what’s wrong with the car. We wanted to be more aggressive to see if we needed to do something very different with the car, and we saw it today at Lewis, we went too far with that.”

“Our car was not good in the race either. We could hear him say: the car didn’t turn. We can also see this from the data. It just wasn’t the right thing to do.” – the British referred to the settings Sky Sportsdeclaring to

In the meantime, he emphasized to the German version of the channel, unusually for him, that Hamilton is also responsible for this bad choice.

“This is not good enough. We had this small highlight yesterday in the sprint race, but sixth and ninth places are not our goal. Again, you can find a reason why it was like that, but we clearly put our car together wrong, and this is where Lewis also gave us a development direction that we went so wrong with. that the car didn’t even turn. Every weekend there’s some explanation, but it’s just not good enough.”

he said critically.

Hamilton also took responsibility after the race. “I made a mistake with the setup and paid for it. Now I’m trying to make sure it doesn’t happen again in the future” he said.

“Could this be made better…”

Although Mercedes was on the front row in the sprint and Hamilton was second in Saturday’s mini-race, according to Wolff, this should not blind them, there is no room for side talk. “There was our small bright spot with the sprint race, but the performance is not good.”

“It could be embellished by the fact that there was a ray of light at the weekend, but we have to take a step forward in Miami. Today we were simply behind the Ferraris and Norris, we were not good enough” stated the Service TVto.

Wolff emphasized that their team will bring its first major improvements of the year to the field in Miami. “I know how much it brings, but after the previous two years I am already cautious. Hopefully another nice progress” he said about the package.

They asked how much Hamilton is already being pulled out of development work because of his departure. “It is a fact that the role of the competitor in car development is always overestimated. Once a year, they give ideas for the development of the next car, and during the year give feedback on what it’s like to drive the car. From this point of view, losing an engineer who goes to another team in twelve months is worse than losing a driver who goes to another team in a week. It doesn’t have that much of an effect” he stated.

According to his champion, he is coping well with the current situation.

“He handles it surprisingly well. Of course, I don’t know if it’s because he already knows where he’s going. But that’s not his style. A true professional.”

“He knows that in sports sometimes you are up and sometimes you are down. But they believe that the way you stand up matters, and even if it feels difficult and you get hit a lot, and your goal is to win, modesty is decisive.”

Wolff admitted that the current situation hurts him and the entire team. “It’s a bit difficult for us right now, but that’s just the reality. We want to do better, and when you can’t live up to your own expectations, it’s tough sometimes.”

“It’s not easy when you go through such a long grace period. This is our third year in a row. If we analyze it, all the factors are there for a good performance, but the physics is not right for us. It’s hard to understand” – admitted the Austrian.