Lewis Hamilton says he always expected his Azerbaijan Grand Prix to be “disastrous” after Mercedes’ engine penalty, with the seven-time world champion eventually finishing ninth in a frustrating race.
Hamilton qualified seventh in Baku but was forced to start from the pit lane after Mercedes opted to fit a new engine and then, in contrast to McLaren’s Lando Norris, struggled to make ground in the race.
The Englishman finished behind both Williams cars in ninth, with his points finish only possible thanks to Carlos Sainz and Sergio Perez’s crash in the battle for third on the penultimate lap.
“I knew it was going to be a disastrous race as soon as this decision was made last night,” said a downbeat Hamilton.
Hamilton started on the hard tyre before pitting on Lap 13, but while Norris moved from 15th to fourth on race day through a pack of cars, a Mercedes car with less straight-line speed made Hamilton’s comeback more difficult.
His comments were eerily similar those of Mercedes boss Toto Wolff, who said: “We knew it would be a race of misery because it’s so difficult to overtake in Baku.”
“You get close then overheat the tyres and you go backwards, so that’s what happened.”
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Mercedes ran the old floor in Baku and will do the same next weekend at the Singapore Grand Prix.
In the opening practice sessions, Hamilton was happy with the balance of the car but struggled from Saturday onwards.
“It was pretty good on Friday but I think the others have developed and we haven’t in this phase – but we have some stuff coming,” he said.
Since the resumption of F1 after the summer break, Hamilton has finished in eighth, fifth and ninth but remains 23 points in front of Russell in the Drivers’ Championship.
Mercedes won three out of four races before the summer but haven’t found that form recently and Wolff hopes a brand-new floor at the United States Grand Prix, which follows Singapore, will improve the performance
“We still suffered from the same balance problems we had with the new floor,” he said.
“With Singapore, we have the same one, so we have to race that. From Austin onwards, we will go to a new spec.”
Russell on ‘odd race’: No one understands the tyres
Russell benefitted from the Perez and Sainz collision to move up from fifth onto the podium in a race of two halves.
The person driving the Mercedes car began the race in fifth place but fell to sixth place after the first lap, following behind Max Verstappen. He was fast when using the harder tires and was the quickest driver in the later part of the race, even though he drove alone for most of it.
It was a strange race. At the beginning, we were slower than Piastri or Charles by 1.5 seconds for the first 20 laps, but towards the end, we were faster than them by one second. We were also faster than Carlos and Checo by 0.3 or 0.4 seconds,” Russell explained to Sky Sports F1.
These tires… on the same car, with the same driver, on the same track. It’s hard to understand how you can have such different outcomes.” P5 was a just outcome. It could have been P6 if Lando had started in his usual spot.
Pirelli used higher tire pressures this weekend, which could have contributed to Russell’s unusual performance on Sunday.
He believes that Mercedes can go very fast once they figure out how to get the tires working well. He said that he was only driving slowly when he was using the medium tires at the beginning of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
“He didn’t have any patience. Charles gained a lead of 17 seconds in 15 laps, so I tried my best to save the tires and bring them back to normal,” he described. “I was driving off a cliff and it felt like the car I was in had high-quality tires and made me feel like I was winning a race.”
Initially, it seemed like the car was performing at a lower level. It can be frustrating for all drivers to have to face this issue every week, but everyone agrees that the problem lies with the tires.
The tires have been in use for 14 years, yet no one has been able to fully comprehend their behavior.