It was a strange feature of Mercedes’ season that, despite the team moving up from third to second place in the constructors’ championship year-on-year, both their drivers scored fewer points than they did in 2022.
Lewis Hamilton was on course to better his 2022 total before hitting a rough patch over the final three races. George Russell had a ‘difficult second album’ of a year after out-scoring his seven-times champion team mate in his first season in a front-running car.
The upshot was Hamilton amassed the most points of either driver. Not that it will matter much to him at the end of a second consecutive win-less season, and Mercedes’ first campaign without a grand prix victory since 2011.
At the end of the year Hamilton admitted he had misgivings about the decisions Mercedes had made with its W14 when he first drove it. While the car plainly wasn’t quick enough and gave its best only within a narrow set-up window, invariably described as a “knife-edge”, Hamilton was ill at ease with its handling from the off.
The car had major cosmetic surgery at the Monaco Grand Prix, following which Hamilton seemed to click with it a little more easily. He reversed his early 4-1 deficit to Russell in qualifying and even claimed the team’s sole pole position of the season at the Hungaroring.
Russell produced a strong run of qualifying performances after the summer break but failed to convert them into strong results. A poor tyre choice at Zandvoort didn’t help and he crashed out while trying to attack Lando Norris in Singapore, on one of the few weekends where Mercedes looked quick enough to win.
The two drivers ended the season all-square in qualifying, the only pair of team mates to do so, though Mercedes often found that when one driver had the car working well the other was unhappy. For a brief spell of races towards the end of the year, the pair found themselves disputing the same piece of track, sometimes to their detriment.
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Hamilton piled pressure on Russell over the closing laps in Singapore before his crash. At Suzuka, Russell was clearly put out by Hamilton’s defensive driving, and the team responded by moving them onto different strategies. But worst followed in Qatar, where a poorly-judged sweep into the first corner by Hamilton took him out of the race and badly compromised Russell’s.
These run-ins were smoothed over,…
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