Hamilton calls out Sky over chassis swap ‘myth’

Lewis Hamilton called out Sky Sports during a post-qualifying interview following comments made by pundit Paul di Resta, in reference to the decision by Mercedes to swap chassis.

Mercedes rotated its chassis this weekend in France, giving Bottas the chassis Hamilton raced with in Baku, whilst the seven-time World Champion used the Finn’s.

Bottas denied the change had been made as a result of his poor form in Baku, amid unfounded suggestions that Mercedes was looking for the opportunity to evaluate whether the chassis was to blame for a difference in performance.

Di Resta, during commentary on Friday, said Hamilton would rue the team’s decision. Hamilton, having heard the comments, said he was “happy” to prove them wrong after he outqualified Bottas in qualifying for the French Grand Prix.

“I’ve been generally unhappy in the car weekend,” Hamilton said to di Resta, who was carrying out the post-qualifying interviews on behalf of Formula 1.

“I saw you come up with some myth, and so I was happy to be able to prove it wrong – the quality of our engineers’ work, you know, all the cars are exactly the same.”

Expanding further in the press conference, Hamilton said: “It’s basically the same tub fitted with your settings. The cars are built around us, so normally you’re not supposed to be able to feel any difference.

“Of course, we made the changes and it’s been a difficult weekend so… of course, you start to wonder, at some stage, whether there are any differences but look at that result: we just got a great result today which just proves that it’s all the same. It’s normal that we rotate. We do this normally anyway.”