Hamilton's worst ever start to an F1 season explained 

'Bono, my tires are gone. Also my downforce, predictability, and oil pressure.'

Merc struggling with budget limitation. Explanation complete

I'd say he had already given up on Mercedes

Lance stroll ahead of him gets me every time 💀💀

The downforce is not downforcing

So the budget cap killed Mercedes

F1 distilled: “If my favourite driver is struggling, it’s the car. If a driver I don’t like is struggling, he’s a bad driver. Or is in decline. Or…whatever.”

George isn’t complaining as much

They had the best car for years because they outspent everyone. It was always “the car” for them.

"My team don't make mistakes" remember?

fun fact: Mercedes W15 is faster than Red Bull RB19, they are months behind Red Bull and Ferrari

It's iffy when you're not even beating ur own teammate in the same car!!!

Insert Homer Simpson meme: Worse season... So far

Probably a bit of both the car is not as good and Lewis declines due to lack of motivation. We saw that with Seb in 2020. The next thing we know, he is back to being a great driver in 2021 with a few very good results.

My rear end instability is due to IBS.

Need to remember that Ross Brawn set up Merc ready for the 2014 session. Toto took all Ross's good work. Look at what he did at Williams with Claire.....not much/ go backwards. This is actually the start of the Toto era at Merc

He put in his two weeks notice. 😂

It also doesn't help that your "star" driver spends so little time in the simulator to help correlate what the sim is doing compared to what the car is doing in the real world.

I'll explain it for you, he can't adapt to not having an absolute rocket ship of a car that's on rails through the corners.

im disappointed in him. the moment his team stops winning and starts struggling he just leaves. doesnt stay to help em through the tough period

Are Ferrari going to regret switching Sainz with Hamilton? - I think so, but let's see.

Lewis hamilton "when I'm winning its because I'm the best driver. When I'm losing its all the car"

You’ve just highlighted that all teams need more testing on track! Great video as always 👍

Hamilton is being paid many millions of pounds to race for Mercedes, so he should do everything he can to score every point possible.

Remind me pls, this is the team that doesn’t makes mistakes ?

Every start to the year has been his worst start to a year for the last few years, I hate it here

Lewis lost his touch, he got to cocky with Bottas as a teammate and stopped developing. Now the new generation has taken over and Lewis seems unable to step up.

I fear ferrari made a mistake… sainz still has a lot of good years ahead of him while hamilton doesn’t realistically…

Hamilton just isn’t what he used to be, but he’s too afraid to admit it. And neither is Mercedes.

“My team don’t make mistakes”

Nice to hear about this! 👍

No other driver had 8 constructor champion wins. He had insane luck with his cars in his career.

Shows how lucky Hamilton has been to have great cars throughout his F1 career.

I really love how the merc downfall and his subsequent transfer to Ferrari exposes these british F1 "media" channels´. Should have seen it coming, guys... it was only a matter of time until the combination of budget cap and honda engine getting better and better would crush mercedes. RB had the best aero car platform for quite some time now and mercedes was busy celebrating and not catching up...

I feel that when Hamilton is not fighting for a championship he can lose 2 tenths in qualifying. If he's not fighting for the win, he loses another half of a tenth in the race. A superb driver. One of the best, but he simply lacks that Alonso-type attitude of giving it all, in all circumstances, regardless of track position or championship ambitions.

Of course, unlike before, he no longer has a car 2 seconds a lap faster than everybody else. Making a career out of sunday cruises to the finish line without opposition made him complacent. After the first bit of opposition from Russel, he gives up and switches team.

wait … i get my 🍿 This is going to be amusing, the BS tech bingo can begin, I have already 3 hits, experimental setups The car has mood swings Unlock the potential

Sigh, or very very maybe, he is just a good driver, but isn't among the best when his car isn't 4 seconds faster than the rest of the field. Don't get me wrong, he is not a bad driver. But nowhere near as good as a lot of people seem to think.

If he bounces back big at Ferrari it will reinforce the feeling he’s just phoning it in at Mercedes at the moment, leading me to think if he doesn’t have a dominant car he doesn’t care enough to put 100% into it.

Finally, the whole British media have avoided talking about merc for the last few weeks. Normally this would be a welcome change (sycophantic bells that they are) but I actually want to hear about them when they are doing badly; schadenfreude is one hell of a drug. :)

Turns out Hamilton doesn't make the difference in the winning capability of the team with his talent alone. But that has always been true, you would just never realize it when he had the fastest car on the grid. He's a grade A Jimmie Johnson comparison: talented enough to take a winning car to the championship, but not enough talent to make an average car a winner. Definitely not a GOAT by that measure.

It's pretty easy to explain. Third year in a row the team doesn't show improvement on the car. They managed to make the car worse despite changing things. Which leads to him not having confidence in it. If the car is going to snap at any moment, you end up being conservative on your driving. Then there's the motivation, which is probably none. I'm sure he wanted to have a great last season with Mercedes but everything is pretty much the same as it was last year, with the distance to RB even bigger. And his mind is probably already drifting towards 2025, hoping Ferrari keeps up a good evolution on their car so he has a chance to fight for something, even if it's just a few podiums or victories, which is more then he has now at Mercedes. It must be quite sad to not be able to deliver a good last season, on both sides, after such a great run together. But that's part of the sport. About him vs Russell, people are already making it like Russell is being far superior, plus there's still plenty of season to go. Hamilton always has bad starts of the year when he's struggling with the car. But soon he understand where he's failing, he pretty much goes to another planet and the teammate starts to fall behind. Which the haters immediately blame on the team helping him or that "his car is better" and whatever he achieved in his career doesn't matter. Meanwhile when the roles are reversed these excuses don't come up and they seem really interested in statistics.

If he cant beat Russell he sure as hell cant beat leclerc

Of course it could be worse, he could drive for Alpine :P

Maybe Lewis will be able to get Angela back when he moves over to Ferrarri?

Hamilton declining just like Seb in his Ferrari days.

It seems he just can't handle NOT having the fastest car for once. Think about it: since his debut he has never once had even the 3rd fastest car. It spoiled him. And now he experiences a midfield car for the first time. As soon as he is not automatically winning, he immediately looses confidence and therefore pace.

Time for retirement and transition to fashion designer.

The amount of videos focus Merc get is on par with Lewis P13 finish Imola(lots of coverage for that position)

I think his performance will only get worse, or won’t improve much. Now that Merc knows he’s leaving, they’ll develop the car to suit Russell’s driving style.

HE’s worse than 2009, the car isn’t. We can only judge him based on teammates performance

I adore how many times they say "If Hamilton is to salvage this season, Mercedes must fix their car", when Russell in same shitbox is outperforming him rn. Yes, car is shit, but Hamilton is also underperforming, even if Merc fixes the car, it wont solve his problems.

This season is going to be a long one for Hamilton and Mercedes. A few scattered podiums is what they look on course for.

Hamilton demanded the engineers what the car needed for 2024. So they gave him what the car needed and now it's worse.

Cost cap means they cant just brute force their way to having the best car on the grid anymore

WASHED

Frankly, I see two massive issues: Mercedes has NO one that understands the Ground effect and Lewis (as much as it pains me to say this) just simply can't adapt to a ruleset that effectively makes his driving style useless. Sure Fernando is older and doing better but he's also driven other types of cars as well, which arguably has played into his adaptability. Hamilton has only ever known F1 and despite how different the regs were between his debut year and 2021, he wasn't driving a car that had to be sealed to the ground to work the way ground effect cars do. As much as the fan in me from 2008 wants to believe a combo of him and Bono (and possibly Newey if Elkan is doing all he can to move heaven and earth) could be a the next greatest thing, older me feels like this might just be over for him despite Ferrari being the only team so far that's actually made significant progress in understanding this ruleset. And lets not forgot who Hamilton is surrounded by at this rate: Ignoring Daniel and Fernando and Valterri (and Haas in General because Haas just should be ignored entirely purely out of spite for Gene), everyone is far younger and far more able to adapt and haven't had a decade on them like he has.

We don’t need a full video to understand the predicament that team is in.

What is there to explain? Hamilton isn't good enough anymore, he's only good in a car 2sec / lap faster than the rest of the field. He better retire before making even more of a fool of himself.

Hamilton is only wins when his car is dominant! If he was such a great driver he would have many podiums with a lesser car than his competitors. This channel loves to make excuses for Lewis, but when Checo has a bad race it’s time for others to replace him. This same measuring stick of replacement should be used with Lewis and not with him taking Carlos’s seat!

Thanks 👍

When I hear them with "what we see in wind tunnel is not the same as on track".......didn't they say in Bahrain that the car shows exactly what they see in the tunnel and now they can improve and develop properly from that? Only lies man....

Lewis is just washed up now. He just needs to clear his seat up and let someone else have a chance in a top team.

I’ve been saying this for 35 years, my nan drives faster

To me it sounds like the Mercedes is a struggle when driving in traffic with more disturbed air from the other cars when compared to 'free' running during practice and qualifying. Now I am certainly no aero expert, but could it be that the aero window is extremely narrow which is a result of looking so narrowly at the wind tunnel numbers and focusing on the sharpest results and not opting for a more rounded out approach?

He’s gone off the boil, lost his edge. It happens to every driver eventually, and he is no exception. He’s not nearly as hungry, or sharp or fast as he was even two years ago. The Title loss to Verstappen broke him in a way that I don’t think even he himself fully understands or acknowledges.

Lewis is now just experiencing what almost any other successful F1 driver would normally have at the beginning of their career and not at the end: A tough season in a mediocre car. Lewis’ F1 career began in top tier machinery. He didn’t have to climb his way up to a top ride like Alonso, Verstappen, Schumacher, Räikkönen, Button or Senna had to.

Remember when merc wasted 3 days of free testing cause they wanted to hide the zero pod concept as long as possible, afraid others might copy it quickly ? Now they be wishing for 3 days of on track testing to sort their car out😂

I've said over and over. If it's the car, then it's the side pods, which were radically different compared to everyone else ever since the new cars were developed. All the aero bits have to work in unison, so if your starting point with the side pods was wrong, you have to redevelop the entire car from scratch to fix it, something Mercedes has refused to do.

Easy: who is the head of FIA since end of 2021? No backing for Mercedes from FIA since then.

Nothing of Value will be lost if Hamilton Leaves :)

I’m not a Ferrari fan but I am a Sainz fan. I still can’t believe they’ve rejected Sainz and kept Leclerc…

A real champion works harder and against all odds to make the best of his/her tools. Not talks more outside the team. Remember there is no 'I' in team....! Mercedes should be giving Schumacher a F1 practice times for his hard work on the SIMM. Can not hurt, as Hamilton is on the way out anyways..........!

Perez had hard time adapting Redbull! Different drive style, Different set up! Almost whole team against him ! You telling me a 7 time world Champion just gives up like that? Care not to adapt? Must feel good when you have it easy! When you don't, Gotta walk away! Perhaps in his mclaren years etc that's the Hanilton that needs to come back! He got.....tooo..... COMPLACENT.

It's shocking a team like Mercedes can suffer the same problems for 3 seasons in a row without being able to fix it. Makes you wonder if there are even more fundamental issue's in the way the teams is working or even how it's run. Three years of not being able to correlate simulation data with real life track data is just crazy..

I'm trying to remember 2 seasons after his move to McLaren in which Hamilton out drove a Subpar car. Maybe he is just an average driver when he isn't behind the wheel of the most dominant car???

once he has problems with his car, the only feasable solution is running away, what a lack of loyalty and hard work. He is going to ferrari to enjoy the other's hardwork. Pretty much the same when he arrived to mercedes after Schumacher retirement.

The rear end stability narrative has become a bit overstated. In the past Hamilton has been extremely adept in pointy cars notably at McLaren. It looks like a combination of age kicking in and there being something very specific about this car that’s not meshing

Reminds me of sebs last season with Ferrari

In all the three races so far, besides the W15 being a tractor yet again, i could not help but feel like lewis isnt mentally present at all,its like hes driving per sé cause hes given up on merc and hes just counting the days till ferrari...

damn, when Audi announced their F1 project I wished that they would fight head to head with mercedes, but this direction was not what I had in mind.

Facts about that silver livery at the front It's the same car that gave Hamilton the worst porpoising in Baku

Mercedes should have stuck with the W13 zero pod concept

How many times can you tell and watch the exact same story?

Reminds me more of seb last year at rb rather than at ferrari as people are saying.

"Bono, how many more days till I am gone?"

What I don't understand is how quick fans can draw conclusions when it comes to Hamilton. I think this data sample of 3 races is too small for fans to say Lewis is on a decline but it took them 2 full seasons at McLaren + a half season to say Danny Ric is washed and some still will find an excuse for him. K-mag has been convincingly outperformed by Hulkenberg and no one wants to mention it. But 3 races in a season with a brand new car concept to adapt to and people are ready to draw conclusions that Hamilton is washed and questioning the Ferrari deal if it was the right decision. All I'm saying is don't be so quick to jump to conclusions because the only thing we know for sure is that the car is bad and needs major improvements if it wishes to get wins and podiums

The reality is hes an average driver at best. Russell destroying him at every marker shows that the only reason he won so many championships was the fact that Merc was allowed 2 more years of development then any other team during that era to get them into F1.

I don’t know but the simple observation is that a team and driver career imploded with the disappearance of a 7 year 50bhp advantage

Its now save to say that its more likely that Verstappen wins 8 championships than Hamilton.

Love the analysis and graphics but is a major reason that Lewis hasn’t got to grips with this era of car and does not seem to enjoy competing with the generation below?

It is 849 days since Sir Lewis last won a race. In that time, Max has won 37 races and 3 WDCs

Love Lewis but he needs to explain why George Russell is outperforming him.

The crack between him & toto started 2 seasons ago, right?

Great video, cheers mate 👍

He's just not got the fire in his belly anymore. Russell shows the true pace

"THE RACE" as a channel is fully a fully pledged Lewis Hamilton fan. Video after video, its like a fan who's always looking to paint over his mistakes and find excuses for his lack of skill. Yeah, it is okay, but it would de you a lot of good if you just admitted it in the beginning or the end of the video. Without it, doing your "journalism" is just doing "fanwok"

Or maybe…. Just maybe… Father time is still undefeated…

Explaining but half explaining, 2009 McLaren, Ferrari, Renault and Red Bull where told not to use the double diffuser by Whiting, as they reduced their aeros by 40% or more, and smaller teams were allowed to use the double diffuser. The new regs have mugged away late braking, which 100% impacts Lewis and Dan. With the rear end instability, and Lewis moving his seat forward it has created more rear end instability. The grey cloud in every silverlining is that Carlos's car looks great for Lewis for 2025.

Reminded me of Vettel in 2014