Lewis Hamilton “despondent” as W15 woes worsen at F1 Australian GP

Karun Chandhok believes Lewis Hamilton “looked pretty despondent” following Friday practice at the F1 Australian Grand Prix.

Seven-time world champion Hamilton said he felt “the least confident” he has with Mercedes’ W15 car after finishing a lowly 18th fastest in what he described as being “one of the worst sessions for a long time” in Melbourne.

Hamilton struggled for pace on both qualifying and race simulations and had several offs at Albert Park. He complained over the radio that something felt “wrong” with his W15 challenger.

In contrast, Hamilton’s Mercedes teammate George Russell had a smoother day and ended Friday sixth in the timesheets.

Speaking on the Sky F1 show, ex-racer-turned-pundit Chandhok felt Hamilton’s body language after FP2 was telling.

“He looked pretty despondent didn’t he?” Chandhok said.

“It made me think of a comment George Russell made after Jeddah. Two weekends in a row, they seem to have started the weekend well and then progressively got less competitive, George felt at least, as the weekend unfolded.

“On this occasion with Lewis it seems like they’ve started on the back foot today. But they’ll have the race support team running the simulator between now and the start of FP3 trying a whole load of set-up options.

“They’ll have information from George’s car. But it’s going to be a challenge. Looking at the long run pace and the McLaren long run looked really strong. We expect Ferrari and Red Bull to be there.

“So all of a sudden, they are now looking at between seventh and 10th. Lewis was 18th today! I don’t think it’s going to be 18th when it comes to qualifying, but it’s going to be a tough weekend to get out of this.”

Fellow Sky pundit Naomi Schiff added: “Bahrain and Saudi they had the same issues on the Friday where they were really complaining.

“Particularly Lewis where he’s not happy with the set-up of the car, a lot of instability on the rear, fighting where they are going to place the ride height to give him a more comfortable ride.

“The problem is they are going into Saturday unconfident with where they are going. They are making a call last-minute on the set-up and unfortunately it seems it is costing them in qualifying and they are therefore having to work their way back up on a Sunday.

“It is something they are going to have to work around and try to find a way to have Lewis more comfortable in the car.”

Mercedes’ trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin confirmed that Hamilton was not happy with his set-up direction.

“Lewis felt that we had gone in the wrong direction with our changes,” he said. “Frustratingly, they weren’t quick to unwind so he had to live with that throughout the session.

“George found the car a bit trickier in the windier conditions of FP2 compared to earlier in the day. We could have ended a bit higher up the time sheets had he not had a bit of damage.

“Overall though, it’s clear that we’ve got work to do overnight to improve the car.”