Lewis Hamilton ’s ability has been called into question by former F1 star Jacques Villeneuve. The Mercedes driver has endured a difficult start to the 2022 season, and a nightmare weekend in Saudi Arabia culminated in a mediocre 10th-place finish.
The silver arrows are struggling to compete with the likes of Red Bull and Ferrari in the early stages of the campaign. They have struggled with porpoising since pre-season testing and their straight line speed, one of the hallmarks of their dominant years, has been found wanting in the first two races of this season.
Hamilton has admitted his team are currently some distance away from competing for the championship, which he has become accustomed to challenging for over the last few seasons. For the time being, it appears Hamilton may spend more time fighting through the field and, according to Villeneuve, he can no longer be saved by Mercedes' 'superior engine.'
The French-Canadian told Formule 1, as per GrandPX.News : "It's obvious that Mercedes has fallen off the pedestal. For years, bad weekends could be camouflaged by their superior engine. That is no longer the case.
“It will be interesting how the team will react, because Toto Wolff and Lewis Hamilton are not used to this. But we can already say that competing for the title is no longer an option. Lewis has always had a perfect car. He never had to push because they were so much faster."
Another ex-F1 driver, Ralf Schumacher, was in agreement with the 1997 F1 world champion and thinks, by the time Mercedes iron out their problems, rivals Red Bull and Ferrari will be out of sight. "The championship is very far away from them now,” the German said. “By the time they can compete again, Leclerc and Verstappen will be too far ahead."
Hamilton’s teammate George Russell was able to bring the car home in fifth this past Sunday, backing up a fourth-place finish in Bahrain. Post-race, the 23-year-old claimed virtually all of Mercedes’ problems would be solved if they were able to eradicate porpoising.
"The faster you go the worse it (porpoising) gets, so it makes it harder for qualifying because we turn the engines up, maximum power, go quicker down the straight which causes more downforce and causes more porpoising," Russell explained. "So we almost need to pre-empt this issue and also in the race when you have the DRS closed, you have more downforce than you do with the DRS open, and that's another factor we need to consider.
“We're still learning and that's why we're far from optimal. But that's why I said if we solve the porpoising, that would cure I would say 99% of our issues. We are going to start trying to develop the car around the issues but we need to solve the underlying problem, which is the porpoising."
