It’s a race for second place, as it has been all season. On Saturday night, Lewis Hamilton said that he can’t wait for it to be over.
The Briton qualified 11th for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, with £8 million riding on his Mercedes team’s ability to cover the cracks of a disappointing season by beating Ferrari to second place in the constructors’ championship.
With only 58 laps remaining in this long season, the Silver Arrows lead the Italians by four points.
However, it should be emphasized that they are 430 points behind Red Bull, for whom Max Verstappen took his regular pole position.
Regardless of who comes in second, Mercedes’ season can scarcely be described as development. They won one race last season and are yet to win this season. Last year, they finished third, although ‘only’ 244 points behind.
Charles Leclerc of Ferrari, who qualified second, is best set to score substantially on Sunday evening local time.
His Ferrari teammate Carlos Sainz finished 16th, although he can still make up ground and score handsomely due to the red cars’ innate speed.
George Russell finished fourth for Mercedes. Throughout practice and qualifying, the 25-year-old, who has been outperformed by Hamilton overall this year, was the more secure of the two.
‘It’s simply a very unpredictable car, and it has been all year,’ said Hamilton, who has one podium in the previous five races and admitting to being ‘off all weekend’.
‘I’m absolutely glad it’s almost over,’ he added. It is more erratic than ever before.
‘It’s up and down from the minute you hit the brakes, turn, and hit the apex.
‘It’s terribly out of balance, and it’s difficult to forecast what will happen.’
This decision comes at the conclusion of a year filled with false dawns for Mercedes.
One wonders if they are any closer to discovering the essential ingredients of the ground-effect era 20 months after the current regulations took effect, a fallow period that has seen one technical director move sideways and then leave entirely; a failure marked by obstinacy in sticking with an original design that was flawed for longer than could be explained.
Now they are left scrapping over the difference between £105m in prize money for finishing second against £96m for coming third. That will impact staff bonuses – determined by the constructors’ standings – and, to a lesser extent, perhaps, optimism on the future.
Others, such as McLaren, are gaining ground. On Saturday, their Oscar Piastri was third fastest. And teammate Lando Norris, who finished fifth, would have likely beaten him if it hadn’t been for his qualifying error.
‘On Saturdays, I do a s*** job,’ the Briton admitted.
Returning to Mercedes, 1996 world champion Damon Hill hopes the serial victors can reclaim the high road, but he understands there are no guarantees.
‘I have a feeling there’s a bunker mentality,’ he remarked. ‘When you’ve been winning for so long, it’s easy to believe that what you’re doing is always correct and what everyone else is doing is incorrect. You can then become lost.’
When asked if team principal Toto Wolff misses his previous non-executive chairman, triple world champion Niki Lauda, who died in 2019, Hill said: ‘He was a clear, hard-nosed pragmatic. Other than success, what does Toto know about Formula One? Never be in the doldrums.’
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