As Lewis Hamilton crossed the line in 13th place at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff issued an apology to his driver over the pit-to-car radio.
“Lewis, sorry for what you have needed to drive today,” Wolff said. “This is undriveable and not what we deserve to score as a result. We will move on from there, but this was a terrible race.”
The implication was that Hamilton was not to blame for the lowly finishing position, which included the indignity of being lapped by race winner Max Verstappen, whom Hamilton fought for the title in 2021.
Given that Hamilton is a seven-time world champion, it’s easy to see where Wolff was coming from, but the sentiment seemed to jar with the performance of Hamilton’s teammate George Russell, who finished fourth in the same car. On paper the result looked awful for Hamilton and means he is now 21 points adrift of his younger teammate after finishing behind him at three consecutive races.
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But dig deeper into Mercedes’ problems and how they impacted Hamilton’s weekend, and it’s easier to understand why Wolff issued such a public apology to Hamilton despite Russell’s strong performance in the sister car. Working back through the Imola race weekends of Hamilton and Russell, it’s easy to see how their diverging fortunes were not a fair reflection of the gap in performance between the two.
Of course, that should take nothing away from Russell’s performance in Imola, which was undoubtedly better than Hamilton’s, but it’s unfair to assume Hamilton has somehow lost his mojo on the basis of one performance.
Lewis Hamilton looked out of sorts at Imola’s Emilia Romagna Grand Prix. Peter J Fox/Getty Images
How spectacular Russell made Hamilton look ordinary
Russell finished a lap ahead of Hamilton and was over 40 seconds up the road when they both started lap 62 of 63 (Hamilton’s race ended on lap 62 as he was one lap down on the leaders). Viewed on the timing screens the gap was massive, but it was mainly…
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