How Hamilton’s latest F1 battle error dents his otherwise stellar 2023

In a huge warehouse across the road from Silverstone circuit, there sit some famously broken parts of modern Mercedes Formula 1 cars. Amongst the mammoth catalogue of almost every car part and piece of team kit the Black Arrows squad has produced at its Brackley base 10 miles down the A43, are scuffed sidepods from the smashed W07 cars that sensationally collided on the opening lap of the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix at Barcelona. So too is the scarily scraped halo from the W12 Max Verstappen rode over when crashing with Lewis Hamilton at the 2021 Monza race.

We wonder, will Hamilton’s broken right rear wheel hub from last weekend’s Qatar GP one day be proudly displayed along with these items? Or are the circumstances so different this time – the painful reminder of just how abnormal a period this has become for the previously dominator Mercedes squad – that it won’t be available for team guest and sponsor gawking?

The question arises because there’s a real chance Mercedes could’ve forced a different outcome to last weekend’s race at the Losail track. It could’ve knocked Verstappen at least away from the clear path to his 14th 2023 F1 victory for Red Bull. Perhaps Mercedes might’ve even have won.

For with no rear gunner thanks to Sergio Perez missing GP Q3 for the sixth time this season, Verstappen was vulnerable. And the unique circumstances of this race with its tyre safety saga meaning mandated stint lengths, so the RB19 couldn’t bring its tyre preservation prowess to bare.

Verstappen still might’ve won had he been forced into pushing flatout, as the McLaren drivers ended up doing behind, if he’d fallen back from pole in the early stages. But once back in the pack and against a team with two hands and excellent drivers to play, the odds only increase for those hoping to inflict just a second 2023 Red Bull defeat.

Because its remaining tyre allocation added up to fewer useable racing laps than Verstappen had available last Sunday night, Mercedes opted to start Hamilton on his new softs because it thought the start grip benefit would outweigh a potential tyre offset loss later on. Having track position would just be so handy.

Hamilton launched well on his soft tyres to challenge on the outside line into Turn 1 where he failed to leave Russell enough space

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Mercedes couldn’t give Russell this approach because he didn’t have any new softs available. But the team did discuss potential racing scenarios at Turn 1 in its pre-race strategy meeting, plus discussed how it might go about best dealing with its drivers on their own different paths to the flag.

It’s logical to expect that Mercedes hoped that by using his softs to power through at the opening corners – as Russell had done so brilliantly in Saturday’s sprint – Hamilton would attack Verstappen. It surely also wanted to see that if even if Hamilton didn’t shoot immediately into the lead, that Verstappen might again respond with 2021 and Brazil 2022-like uber-aggression, possibly leaving Russell to pick up the pieces again.

In any case, Mercedes’ softs choice left it fine with Hamilton having to stop early – on lap eight of 57. Such was the limited life of that compound, it wasn’t even close to getting to the 18-lap limit.

It can be argued that such incidents are rather starting to pile up now as Hamilton’s career stretches on away from its clear performance peak. And these are starting to dent his well-earned reputation as a clean racer across the majority of his long F1 career

None of what Mercedes hoped for ultimately came together thanks to the Turn 1 collision that had Hamilton out on the spot. But from the pitlane under the safety car to replace a left-front puncture he’d picked up in the shunt, Russell’s pace was mighty as he charged from last to finish fourth.

His pace averaged out a step behind Verstappen on the mediums, but they were running very different races after Turn 1. But it’s Russell’s effective second stint 1m28.294s average compared to Oscar Piastri’s 1m28.644s and Lando Norris’s 1m28.718s that stands out.

Russell was on new mediums and the McLaren pair were both on five-lap old sets of the yellow-walled rubber, but this was a time the track was still rubbering in, so graining was worse, and Russell did this all while battling nearly the same number of cars as the McLarens – including faster ones they had started ahead of and not just safety car stoppers or new medium starters down the order.

His final softs stint means Russell’s race can’t be compared with the McLarens overall and in that final run to the flag he lost time charging his battery for a fastest lap attempt where he a had wild moment, plus had to avoid pushing track limits late on after earning exhausting his four strikes.

Hamilton initially blamed Russell for their clash but accepted he was at fault after seeing a replay

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Hamilton initially blamed Russell for their crash before accepting “full responsibility” once he’d seen the replay – apologising to his team-mate and Mercedes wider squad for the incident. He also picked up a €50,000 fine – half of which is “suspended for the remainder of the 2023 season on condition that there is no further breach of similar nature”, per the FIA – for running across the track to return to the pits. He arrived back on the inside of Turn 1 rather too close to Russell exiting from his safety car stop.

The crash incident is eerily similar to Hamilton’s clash with Fernando Alonso on lap one of last year’s Belgian GP. As at Les Combes at Spa, he just seems to have misjudged how much room his rival on the inside had and ended up out of the race himself on both occasions.

That it’s a repeated poor error is one thing. That they sit alongside Hamilton’s 2021 Imola and Baku offs and his sloppy move over on Piastri at Monza three events ago is another.

It can be argued that such incidents are rather starting to pile up now as Hamilton’s career stretches on away from its clear performance peak. And these are starting to dent his well-earned reputation as a clean racer across the majority of his long F1 career. That survives, however, as this wasn’t a deliberate foul nor over-aggressive defence.

But perhaps the most frustrating thing about this incident for Hamilton is that it blots what was an otherwise excellent 2023 campaign. Aside from the Monza penalty and his Spa sprint race clash with Perez (that was really a racing incident shockingly penalised), Hamilton’s consistency and assuredness for Mercedes has stood out brilliantly.

Russell has pushed him close on pure pace – he leads their qualifying head-to-head 9-8 – perhaps closer than any other team-mate he’s had in F1 since Alonso at McLaren back in 2007. But Hamilton has maintained the edge in the critical long-run tyre management factor, with Russell still prone to going too hard, too early, in race stints. If their positions had been reversed late in the recent Singapore thriller, it’s easy to see Hamilton and Mercedes celebrating the win and not Carlos Sainz and Ferrari.

Plus, it was mainly Russell’s errors in Monaco, Canada and Singapore that had created the 75-point and five-place difference between them in drivers’ standings, which is now down to 62 points around the same other drivers.

Hamilton and Russell have been evenly matched in 2023, but the seven-time champion has enjoyed the upper-hand

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

For those of us tasked with ranking F1 drivers come a campaign’s conclusion – always a bit of fun – this incident has surely boosted Alonso back ahead behind Verstappen in such considerations. Sure, the Spaniard’s own late-season errors are piling up too, but none have been as bad as Hamilton’s here.

Mercedes’ communications director Bradley Lord – facing the media post-race with team boss Toto Wolff still recovering from recent knee surgery at home in Monaco – referenced “competitive tensions” between the Mercedes pair existing this year. This specifically meant how Hamilton and Russell’s frustrations at Mercedes’ lack of performance was motivating for it to try and recover, but it’s not hard to hear this in their respective radio messages after Hamilton’s on-the-edge defence against Russell having just run off the road at Suzuka. So too in a few other close calls (in qualifying) in Spain and Belgium.

Mercedes really needs to need to sort this all out before it arrives in the upcoming Mexico and Brazil events that follow Austin next up – where Hamilton always goes well. The two subsequent races are chances where it really could have victory shots, as Mercedes did in 2022, with those layouts much better suited to the W14’s strengths than Qatar and Suzuka. And Mercedes is privately targeting big potential upcoming results on ground where it knows it has previous good form.

But if their car can be in the lead fight, wherever, both Hamilton and Russell need to be flawless to beat Verstappen, particularly if Perez does end his current awful streak.

Mercedes can ill afford for its drivers not to be flawless if it is to beat Verstappen to win a race this year

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images