Hamilton: Mercedes W15 F1 car not the ‘evil sister’ of its predecessors

Lewis Hamilton has denied that Mercedes’ 2024 Formula 1 car is the “evil sister” of its predecessors, despite the team’s challenging start to the latest campaign.

Mercedes has struggled since F1’s return to ground effect cars in 2022, logging one win in the past two seasons amid its persistence with the ‘zeropod’ solution.

Hamilton admitted he was aware the W14 would not be a title-contending car from his debut impression and later described it as the “evil sister” of 2022’s W13.

But with the team opting to overhaul its car concept for 2024 as it strived to dial out its past limitations, Mercedes held renewed optimism heading into the season.

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However, Hamilton bemoaned battling an unstable rear end in Saudi Arabia as he slumped to a ninth-place finish, having been classified seventh in the Bahrain opener.

The seven-time champion is remaining upbeat about the German marque’s prospects, though, insisting it has failed to extract the outright potential from its package.

“I think it’s definitely not the evil sister or anything like that,” he said ahead of the Australian Grand Prix, where he struggled to 18th place in the second practice hour.

“I do think we have an amazing car, there’s a lot of potential in it, and I think we just haven’t maximised it at the moment through setup, through ultimate mistakes, and we’re obviously not happy with the performance of those first couple of races.

“But I think there’s a lot more potential in it that we just haven’t quite extracted yet.

“So that’s what everyone’s focus is on, just trying to understand the car, and we’re hoping this weekend it’s a step forward.

“There’s a huge amount of work that’s going on, everyone’s heads are down in the numbers, and I feel positive this weekend, we’ve had two not-so-great races, but there’s a long way ahead.”

Both Hamilton and team-mate George Russell provided positive assessements of the W15 in pre-season testing, while the car has shown strong pace during practice.

Hamilton believes that Mercedes’ failure to replicate that speed when it has counted has boiled down to being unable to get the car into the correct operating window.

“I think we had a really good winter, the three-day test that we had, four-day test,” he explained.

“We’ve made big improvements with this car. So just in terms of generally driving it, it feels like a much, much better car, much more like a race car.

“But there are… It can drop on one end or the other end. It’s a narrow working window with these types of cars.”

Hamilton boasts a record eight pole positions at Albert Park, but the Mercedes driver is unsure about the prospects of displacing Red Bull or Ferrari from the podium.

Asked about the prospects of landing a seventh career top-three finish in Australia this weekend, Hamilton answered: “We don’t know.

“Maybe this weekend with the changes we’ve made, maybe the car will be in a much sweeter spot, like we saw in some of the testing in Bahrain. But we won’t find out until tomorrow.

“I mean, realistically, the other guys have done an amazing job, because Aston [Martin] have really taken a step forward, Ferrari have taken a step forward, McLaren and Red Bull have done an amazing job with their package also. So it will be close.

“You can imagine that Red Bull’s going to be ahead more likely. And the competition is closer than it was last year.

“But our car has been particularly strong, I would say, in the medium and low end, so to speak, corners. We saw it in the last race, and there’s more of that here.

“We’re going to be giving it absolutely everything and give it hell this weekend.”

Despite having not added to his record win count since December 2021, Hamilton is still optimistic that he can crown his final Mercedes season with further victories.

“I do believe that we’ve still got that winning mindset within the team,” he added. “I have absolute faith that these guys are going to fix any of the problems that we have. We will get there.

“The fact that Max [Verstappen] has 58 points, I mean, I have eight points after two races. If you just think… If you’re logic about it, you have to be conscious that it’s a very long season also. So things can change, but it’s going to be very hard to catch those guys. Their car, they drop it on the track, and it just works for us.

“We are really, really grinding to pick up that performance and get it to where we need to be.

“The dream and the goal is still… If we can get wins this year or podiums this year, I think that could be really amazing.

“To finish second in the Constructors’ [Championship] last year, given the issues we had with the car, just shows what we can do with something that’s not even perfect. So I’m hoping that we can do that again this year.”