Finding limit of Mercedes F1 car like creeping up behind a kicking horse

The seven-time world champion has endured a difficult 2022 campaign with the Mercedes W13, which has suffered from excessive bouncing and a lack of performance.

Hamilton has described the car as the most ‘unpredictable’ of his career, and says the experience of taming it has been a challenge.

Speaking in an interview with selected media, including Autosport, looking back at the 2022 season, Hamilton said of the car: “I described it to my engineers: imagine if you are creeping up behind a horse and you’re trying to get as close as possible, what’s the breaking point before it kicks you in the face? And you know it’s going to hurt when it hits your face.

“That’s one of the best ways I can say what it’s like, when you’re trying to lean on the car and it’s snapping and unrecoverable. And this car, it’s random.”

Hamilton said that he knew from the very first test with the car before the start of the season that things were not going to be easy – but he had hoped the team would get on top of things quicker than it did.

“I had a feeling when I first drove the car. But you can never say no, and you can never say never,” he said. “Maybe we would have fixed it by the first race. Who knows?

“It’s sometimes difficult to know how long it’s going to take to fix those things. Plus, I’d never had bouncing like that.

“I didn’t expect the guys to take as long. They didn’t expect it to take as long as it’s taken them to understand what’s causing the bouncing. They’ve had to create new tools, all these things we didn’t have before.

“You just hold on to hope. And then the next upgrade comes and it doesn’t work, and the next one comes and doesn’t work. Imagine people that are building those things and they are seeing performance in the windtunnel but they are not seeing it on the track. Ah Jesus, you just keep getting knocked back down.

“But what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and we’re still standing tall. It’s not going to be easy to change the car into a leading car for next year but I think we have a much better understanding in why the car is the way it is.”

Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W13

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

While the extreme bouncing of Mercedes has been a key factor in holding Mercedes back, Hamilton says there were several factors at play to explain the lack of performance compared to Ferrari and Red…