‘Lewis Hamilton needs car confidence, is not a technician like Michael Schumacher’

Lewis Hamilton is not a technician like Michael Schumacher according to one of the Brit’s former colleagues.

Philipp Brändle is an aerodynamicist who spent six years at Mercedes working on Hamilton’s cars so is a pretty good judge of how the seven-time World Champion operates.

The former Mercedes staff member has been speaking of Hamilton’s difficulties during a season in which he finds himself 75 points behind Championship leader Max Verstappen.

In the seven races of 2022, Hamilton has finished on the podium just once and while George Russell has shown an ability to get the most out of an underperforming car, Brändle said that Hamilton works best when he has confidence in the car.

“Lewis needs to have confidence in the car, which is very important to him,” Brändle said, as reported by speedweek.com. “He’s not like [Michael] Schumacher and doesn’t have the technical background. But he can feel the car particularly well.

Brändle was also quick to not rule Hamilton out of this year’s title race, commenting that he was 32 points behind the leader last year before fighting his way back to the top in much fewer races.

Mercedes appeared to have turned a corner in Spain in regards to their troubles with the W13 but last time out in Monaco, they again found themselves lacking pace.

Russell finished 11.968 seconds off race winner Sergio Perez while Hamilton was 50.388 behind the Mexican.

Mercedes’ trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin said the Monaco circuit “highlighted our weaknesses.”

“It’s been a frustrating weekend for the team and drivers,” he wrote in Mercedes post-race debrief. “We weren’t anywhere near quick enough on one lap but even in the race we didn’t have enough pace.

“George did a good job to take P5 from Lando on the dry transition and also to hold him behind at the end of the race; luckily, he was only there for one lap. Lewis had a tough time sandwiched between the Alpines for most of the race –…