Lewis Hamilton brands Mercedes car ‘a disaster’ and writes off F1 season after more pain at Canada GP practice
LEWIS Hamilton has branded his Mercedes car “a disaster” and written off the rest of the season.
The team’s woes appeared to have gone from bad to worse after an uncompetitive showing in practice at the Canadian Grand Prix.
Hamilton hit out at the car as he experienced another difficult day behind the wheel of his Mercedes, which has failed to compete with Red Bull and Ferrari throughout the season.
He added that the team should instead focus on building a better car for next year.
After calling the car “undriveable” over team radio, he said: “We were trying lots of different things and an experimental floor on my side, which didn’t work. Nothing we do with this car seems to work.
“George [Russell] went with a much different setup in FP2 just to see if one ways works and one way doesn’t.
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“I’ll wait to hear from him how it went but, for me, it was a disaster.
“It’s like the car is getting worse, it’s getting more and more unhappy the more we do to it.
“We’ve been working on it and it is what it is. I think this is the car for the year, so we just have to tough it out and work hard on building a better car for next year.”
Hamilton was eighth with his team-mate Russell sixth in first practice.
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And he fell even further off the pace in second practice, finishing 13th and 1.2 seconds off his former Championship rival Max Verstappen.
Russell had a slightly better second practice, finishing seventh.
Mercedes’ struggles have become one of the stories of the season, with the once untouchable outfit struggling with sweeping rule changes which shook up the order this season.
Their main issue has been porpoising, which has seen cars repeatedly bounce against the ground while going at high speeds.
Hamilton said he had serious back pain after having to put up with the bouncing down the long pit straight at Baku last week.
F1’s governing body the FIA has indicated in recent days they could bring in rule changes to deal with the porpoising issue.