Lewis Hamilton will have drawn ‘satisfaction’ from one thing in his worst-ever start to an F1 season, Karun Chandhok says.
Hamilton sits down in 10th in the championship heading into the Japanese Grand Prix this weekend.
But speaking to Sky Sports F1, pundit Karun Chandhok named one thing he will have enjoyed.
Hamilton has failed to finish inside the top six in any of the opening three races for the first time in an F1 career that dates back to 2007.
He’s struggled to get to grips with Mercedes’ new W15 car, coming home seventh in Bahrain and ninth in Saudi Arabia before an engine failure ended his race in Australia.
Teammate George Russell has out-qualified him at all three rounds and scored 10 more points (18 vs eight).
Martin Brundle said in Melbourne that it looked as if Hamilton’s car simply ‘would not respond’.
And Ted Kravitz reckons the 39-year-old is much less optimistic about the season ahead than team boss Toto Wolff.
Hamilton is in his final year with the Silver Arrows before he joins rivals Ferrari in 2025.
Karun Chandhok says Lewis Hamilton will have enjoyed Ferrari 1-2
Chandhok suspects Hamilton had an ‘inkling’ that Mercedes were going to struggle this year, hence agreeing to switch teams even before the season started.
The once-dominant German manufacturer has been unable to match Red Bull since the start of F1’s ground effect era in 2022.
They have only one race in the past three seasons, with Russell leading home Hamilton at the 2022 Brazilian Grand Prix.
The consolation for the seven-time world champion is that his new team Ferrari are looking strong.
They scored their first one-two finish since the 2022 Bahrain GP last time out, with Carlos Sainz winning ahead of Charles Leclerc.
“The timing of his decision, it couldn’t have been out of nothing,” Chandhok said.
“The timing suggests he had some inkling that it wasn’t going to be great, so I might as well take the chance to try something new.
“If he thought Mercedes were going to give him a car that would win him the championship this year and in 2025, I don’t think he would have left.
“We all know what happened with Max’s retirement, but I imagine Lewis took a little bit of satisfaction at seeing the Ferrari one-two.”
Will Mercedes and Hamilton improve in Japan?
Hamilton heads to Suzuka this weekend looking for a big result that will lift him up the standings.
Only Michael Schumacher (six times) has won the Japanese GP more than the Briton (39), with the last of those triumphs coming in 2018.
However, there’s reason to believe that the circuit won’t be especially well-suited to the W15.
Suzuka is one of the fastest tracks on the calendar, and Mercedes struggled mightily in the high-speed corners in Jeddah last month.
They were the second-slowest team on the grid in those sections, behind the likes of Alpine and Williams.
Their underperformance led Wolff and co. to investigate ‘fundamental’ design issues with their machinery.
More generally, Mercedes aren’t seeing a correlation between their simulations and their on-track performance, which may hamper them at every event.
Chandhok felt Hamilton looked ‘despondent’ after wrestling with his car in Australia, and he may be in for another tough weekend.
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