Lewis Hamilton says his emotions “went everywhere” after his prospects of a first win of 2022 unravelled at Formula 1’s Dutch Grand Prix.
Mercedes showed strong pace in race trim at Zandvoort, with Hamilton holding second to Max Verstappen – and on a different tyre compound – following a Virtual Safety Car period.
Hamilton inherited the lead under the Safety Car when Verstappen pitted for Softs, while rivals behind also stopped for the red-banded tyres.
Hamilton was swiftly overhauled by Verstappen and also fell behind Mercedes team-mate George Russell and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.
An irate Hamilton radioed Mercedes to say “I can’t believe you guys f***ing screwed me, I can’t tell you how pissed I am,” before classifying fourth.
“The car was different to how it had been all year long,” said Hamilton. “And when I got up to second, I had that hard tyre on and I was catching them and I was thinking ‘we might be fighting for a win here. And potentially a one-two’.
“And then the safety car and the frickin’ emotions went everywhere because I knew that at that point, I’d lost it.
“Before the restart. I knew when everyone was on the Soft tyre behind me I knew that there was no way I was going to hold them behind me.”
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff sympathised with Hamilton’s frustration.
“When you’re the driver in the car, it just comes out of you, you can’t even stop it,” said Wolff.
“We [as the team] are the trash can [or] the vomit bag in the airplane. And we’re taking all that because we need to this is how it is always been in a relationship between frustrated driver and the pit wall. So we have said together we will discuss the race strategy.”
Why do Mercedes continue to put up with this piece of sh*t? They’ve known for two years now (since Russell filled in for him) that any decent driver can be thrown into a dominant car and do what Hamilton does. And now that the car isn’t dominant, he’s been exposed as being slightly above average (at the most) and also isn’t even the best in his team. The only driver on the grid that is worth $55 million per year is Alonso, who is precise and machine-like, and would absolutely be winning every now and then in the strange car that Mercedes has produced this year, and in a Red Bull would have won every race this year where the Jap crap equipment didn’t give up.
Alonso is struggling to catch Ocon. Neither Verstappen, nor Leclerc, nor Russell, nor Norris would give him a second thought. He’s a has been. Which is at least better than being a whinging never-was blaming his team as soon as his many inadequacies are exposed.
If he wins it’s him, if he loses it’s the team, total dick!
He is so two faced and really bad at hiding it. Just imagine what he says behind closed doors to his entourage about all of the whiteys at Mercedes who “screwed him”. Can’t wait until those private discussions leak someday and cancel him out of existence by his own.