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AUSTIN, TX – “We just needed a few more laps, Lewis.”
Pete Bonnington’s voice sounded elated as Lewis Hamilton crossed the finish line for second place at the United States Grand Prix.
For a driver-engineer pair who have won more than 80 Formula 1 races since 2013, P2 is not a position that can be celebrated with great fervor or passion.
Hamilton’s late pursuit of Verstappen ended in a narrow defeat by 2.2 seconds as the Red Bull driver scored his 15th grand prix win of the season and the 50th of his career.
The strength of Hamilton’s performance would later lose its material value when his car failed a post-race technical inspection. The floorboard on the underbody of the Mercedes W14 was thinner than the required minimum thickness of 9 mm, which led to exclusion. Charles Leclerc was disqualified for the same violation and lost his sixth place.
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It was a bitter end to what was otherwise the most encouraging weekend of Hamilton and Mercedes’ season. The pace wasn’t just there to keep up with the front. Hamilton could have won.
“This is definitely the most positive thing I’ve felt this year,” Hamilton said before it was announced his car had failed the technical check and lost second place.
A step towards achievement and self-confidence
The signs were there when Hamilton drove his first lap in practice at the Circuit of The Americas on Friday. Mercedes’ last major upgrade of the season was a modernized floor installed in the cars of Hamilton and his teammate George Russell. Mercedes hoped to not only improve performance but also support its development direction for next year.
Second place was Hamilton’s best result since the Spanish Grand Prix at the beginning of June and made the increase in performance clear. And it was for merit. “That’s a solid second,” he said. “It’s not just about finishing second – it was a solid second.”
Perhaps more important is the improved feeling Hamilton had in the Mercedes W14. He could throw the car into the corners and know it would hold, thanks to a more comfortable balance that gave him more confidence – something he was lacking in points this year.
“For example, it was only a tenth (second) upgrade, but it gave me at least a tenth of confidence,” Hamilton explained. “So it’s pretty interesting what you see when you have a double domino effect.”
It was a necessary breakthrough for Hamilton and Mercedes. 2023 was, in Hamilton’s words, “not a terrible year,” but it fell well short of the team’s expectations. The pain of 2022, the first winless season in Hamilton’s 16-year Formula 1 career, motivated Mercedes to correct the mistakes of last year’s car – only to make it clear in the first qualifying session of the year in Bahrain that its efforts were by far had failed.
Although Mercedes brought a number of updates to the car this year, most notably ditching the slim sidepod concept at Monaco, Hamilton said Austin was “the first weekend where I really felt the upgrades were working.”
“I know how hard everyone works in the factory,” he added. “But it’s nice to finally see the reward of their hard work and feel it in the car too.”
How Hamilton could have won
Disqualification from second place would harm Hamilton and Mercedes. Still, they could have lost their first win in nearly two years because of the wear and tear on the boards – certainly a crueler, worse scenario.
Hamilton overtook the Ferraris of Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc and took second place after six laps. The gap to the leader Lando Norris was around three seconds. Towards the end of the stint he made inroads on the McLaren and reduced the gap to 1.6 seconds before Norris pitted at the end of lap 17. This was in response to Verstappen, who had gone to the start at the end of lap 16 to try and caught the undercut as he was struggling with a braking problem.
“This is definitely the most positive thing I’ve felt this year,” Hamilton said. (David Buono/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Instead of pitting Hamilton on the same lap as Norris to fend off Verstappen – who was four seconds behind Hamilton before the stop – Mercedes decided to keep him out a few laps longer. Red Bull told Verstappen that they expect Hamilton to try a one-stop strategy and extend the stint.
Mercedes thought about it, but when the pit wall saw Hamilton’s times starting to drop massively, they had to substitute him at the end of the 20th lap. A slow pit stop didn’t help.
The tire offset over four laps caused by the extended absence should help Hamilton attack Norris. But his absence allowed Verstappen to improve position on the track by setting a series of quick laps on his new tires. Hamilton slipped from a four-second lead over Verstappen to a six-second deficit, leaving him confused about the strategy.
“We simply lost too much time when extending and our performance really fell off,” explained Hamilton. “Then when I came out, those guys were miles away. When Max came into the pits, he wasn’t even close to me.”
Had Mercedes pitted on the same lap as Norris, it would have kept Hamilton ahead of Verstappen on the track and put him in a direct fight, car against car, driver against driver. Instead, his offset strategy sparked a late attack on the medium tire that saw him overtake Norris and then lag a few laps behind Verstappen to reach the finish line.
Could Hamilton have won if the first pit stop had been a few laps earlier?
“Yeah, I think we would have been in a fighting position to fight with Max,” Hamilton said. “I think we made life a lot harder for ourselves today than it probably should have been.”
The optimism of the disqualification
It’s a hard blow for Hamilton and Mercedes to lose P2 in this way. They could not have claimed force majeure or other circumstances. The team accepted the FIA’s decision and said the wear on the underbody panel was due to the bumpy track and the reduced time to set up and check the car before the race in the sprint weekend format. Driving a car closer to the ground can help improve downforce. This is why the FIA sets a minimum thickness for planks and checks them after a race.
The 18 points lost have a big impact for both Hamilton and Mercedes. In the fight for second place in the drivers’ championship, Hamilton had reduced the gap to Sergio Pérez to 19 points. Now there are 37. Mercedes’ 31-point lead over Ferrari in P2 in the constructors’ championship shrinks to 21 points.
But in the long term, the weekend was full of positives. The journey Hamilton and Mercedes are currently on is not about second place. It’s about returning to the serial title-winning status that dominated Formula 1 between 2014 and 2020 with six titles in seven years. Sunday’s race showed that the team is on the right track.
“There are a lot of things we can all improve in terms of processes,” Hamilton said. “I firmly believe that we are going in the right direction.”
Hamilton still has four races left to end his win drought that has stretched beyond two seasons. Although Verstappen and Red Bull will continue to be incredibly difficult to beat, Austin Hamilton gave hope that everything will fall into place – and that a win could happen before the end of 2023.
“Maybe we will be in such a position if we have the right strategy and the right pit stop,” said Hamilton. “Maybe we’ll be on their heels and see some good racing. So I’m excited.”
(Lewis Hamilton main image: Song Haiyuan/MB Media/Getty Images))