04/08/2025
NEWS STORY
Lewis Hamilton continues to self-criticise as Fred Vasseur and Toto Wolff leap to his defence.
Another day, another uninspiring performance and another, almost mono-syllabic interview with Sky's Rachel Brookes.
Starting twelfth after failing to make it out of Q2, that is exactly where Hamilton finished his race on a track where has won eight times previously.
At one stage he ran as high as seventh, but that was mainly due to him being on a one-stop strategy and temporarily benefiting as his rivals pitted twice.
On a track notorious for its lack of overtaking opportunities, the seven-time world champion spent the first 20 laps staring at the rear of Kimi Antonelli's Mercedes, then Isack Hadjar, then former nemesis Max Verstappen, before spending the final 20 laps trailing Hadjar again.
Asked, at race end, if he could elaborate of his comments made on Saturday, when he described himself as "useless" and suggested Ferrari get another driver, Hamilton told Brookes: "Not particularly, when you have a feeling you have a feeling.
"There's a lot going on in the background," he added, "that's not great."
Asked if he still loved racing he replied: "No, I still love it... I still love the team."
Asked if he was looking forward to the break, and whether he would be in the car at Zandvoort, he said: "I look forward to coming back," before adding, "hopefully I will be back, yeah."
The Briton's suggestion to things going on the background, not to mention his doubt over whether he will be in the car in Holland, suggest all is not well within the team, however Fred Vasseur was quick to leap to the driver's defence.
Vasseur, who worked with Hamilton in his GP2 championship winning days, insists that the Briton's comments come purely from frustration.
"I don't need to motivate him," said the Frenchman. "Honestly, he's frustrated, but not demotivated.
"Yeah, he's demanding," he continued. "But I think it's also why he's seven times world champion. He's demanding with the team, with the car, with the engineers, with the mechanics, with myself as well.
"I can perfectly understand the situation. Sometimes you are making comments on what the driver is saying in the car, but if you put the microphone on some other sportsmen in football and so on, I'm not sure that it would be much better.
"When you are a seven-time world champion, your team-mate is on pole position and you are out in Q2, it's a tough situation," said Vasseur. "But overall, we can also have a deep look that he was in front of Charles in Q1, with the first set that he was one tenth off in Q2. We were not far away from having the two cars out in Q2. And the outcome of this is that Charles at the end is able to do the pole position.
"The issue is that when we were lacking performance and at risk, he did one lap two tenths slower than Charles, and he was out in Q2," he added.
"I don't know if we were unlucky with Lewis or lucky with Charles to go through, but at the end of the day, it's really on the edge.
"But I can understand the frustration from Lewis, that's normal, and he will come back," he insisted. "Then he was stuck in a DRS train, but when he was alone, the pace was good. I'm sure that he will be back and he will perform."
Former boss, Toto Wolff also played down Hamilton's comments.
"That is Lewis wearing his heart on his sleeve," said the Mercedes boss, who oversaw six of the Briton's titles. "It's what he thought very much when he was asked after the session, when he was very raw.
"He was doubting himself, and we had it in the past," he admitted. "When he felt that he had underperformed his own expectations, and the team had its own goal, he's been that emotional, emotionally transparent since he was a young boy, a young adult. So, he's going to beat himself up.
"He's the GOAT," the Austrian insisted. "And he will always be the GOAT, and nobody's going to take that away. For sure, no single weekend or race season that hasn't gone to plan."
Asked, in lieu of the driver's comments, if Hamilton might simply choose to retire, Wolff said: "Lewis has unfinished business in Formula 1. In the same way that Mercedes underperformed over this latest set of regulations since 2022, he kind of never got happy with ground effect cars, in the same way, it beats him. Maybe it's linked to driving style.
"So, he shouldn't go anywhere. Next year, brand new cars, completely different to drive, new power units that need an intelligent way of managing the energy. That's absolutely on for Lewis, and I hope he stays on for many more years, and certainly next year is going to be an important one."
Check out our Sunday gallery from the Hungaroring here.