Mercedes debacle causes Zoff
Hamilton and Wolf clash hard
4/23/2022, 9:14 am
The Mercedes racing team experienced a complete sporting disaster in Formula 1 qualifying in Imola: Lewis Hamilton and George Russell, with their early retirement in 13th and 11th, provided the Silver Arrows with the worst qualifying result in years. That makes for bare nerves.
There were turbulent scenes that have never been seen before in the Mercedes pits: after Lewis Hamilton retired early in qualifying at Imola (the race on Sunday, from 2 p.m. LIVE on RTL and in the live ticker on ntv.de) the Formula 1 record world champion and team boss Toto Wolff apparently clashed verbally. What happened? Outbreak of frustration after the disappointing 13th place in Q2?
“Sky” expert Ralf Schumacher found: “Obviously, there was no agreement. I’m not a lip reader, but it didn’t look so positive.” “The current situation is a small test for the team, says Schumacher. “What do you do, in which direction do you go? I think we promised a lot more this weekend.”
Hamilton later declined to answer questions about the incident. “I’m not talking about internal things here,” the Briton made clear. “We just keep working hard.” But the seven-time world champion couldn’t resist a dig. “We came here optimistically – and then not everything comes together. Overall, as a team, we have shown too little performance,” said Hamilton, adding: “There are things that we should have done but didn’t do.”
“Headache Watching”
During practice and qualifying it became clear: Mercedes still has a big problem with what is known as bouncing – at top speed on the straights, the Silver Arrow starts bouncing wildly. “You only get a headache when you’re watching,” commented ex-Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg on the pictures on Sky.
The reason for the bouncing is the tearing off of the air flow under the car, which is actually supposed to generate downforce in the new ground-effect cars. “It’s a big challenge and I don’t know when they’ll have a solution,” said Rosberg. So but the Mercedes is not competitive. “They were two seconds slower per lap, that’s unbelievable, nothing goes straight,” said the ex-world champion.
But that’s not the only thing that should frustrate Hamilton. The fact that his new teammate George Russell is regularly faster than him should also rankle him a lot. Although it was only enough for Russell to place 11 in qualifying. But on his fastest lap at the Autodormo Enzo e Dino Ferrari, he took almost four tenths off Hamilton. And to put the debacle back in history: For the first time since 2012, both Mercedes missed out on the top 10 in Formula 1 qualifying…