"Is the car broken?": Lewis Hamilton's bewildered reaction on his deficit against frontrunners
Lewis Hamilton shared a surprising reaction to his Mercedes challenger during the 2024 Qatar Grand Prix. The Mercedes driver, on his team radio, asked if his car was broken as he consistently began to fall behind the front runners — the Red Bulls, McLarens, and Ferraris.
Hamilton had a far-from-ideal start to his Qatar GP outing after the Mercedes driver had a false start to his race. As a result, he was handed a five-second time penalty. It wasn't all, as the seven-time world champion seemingly ran over debris on the track.
The action caused his tires to get punctured. In doing so, he lost multiple track positions and had to come to the pits to change his tires. However, it did not help his race, as Hamilton complained about his pace.
During the race, Hamilton took to his team radio to ask:
"How far are we off the front?"
Replying to this, his race engineer Peter Bonnington said:
"1.2 to the front."
Hearing this, Hamilton followed up:
"Is the car broken?"
Bono, then replied:
"We are just underbalanced by the look of it, underbalanced."
Notably, the FIA came under scrutiny for not bringing out the safety car or yellow flags to clear the debris. The delay on its part partly jeopardized the races of Hamilton and Carlos Sainz.
Formula 1 is in Qatar for the final Sprint race weekend of the season, and the penultimate race weekend of 2024.
Mercedes boss clarified Lewis Hamilton's "just slow" claim
After a subpar qualifying performance on Saturday, Lewis Hamilton stated during his post-qualifying interview that his car was "just slow." Following this, Toto Wolff, the Mercedes team principal, came out to share the clarification.
Here's what he said:
“I’m certain that it’s not true,” Wolff told F1 TV. “It’s just this generation of cars, particularly how the car is now. It’s just something that he likes, he’s a late braker, he carries a lot of speed on the entry to the corner and the car doesn’t take it."
"You can see him inking out, taking more and more time intellectually, and trying to find more performance. We need to give him a car that’s to his liking. He’s very team-oriented, doesn’t say anything, but he’s not happy with the car.”
Mercedes is running comfortably in P4 in the constructors' championship and is set to finish behind McLaren, Ferrari, and Red Bull in the standings.