Lewis Hamilton’s woeful weekend in Baku continued as the Mercedes driver struggled throughout the 2024 Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Having started his race on Sunday from the back of the pack, Hamilton shared a cryptic message to his team as he grappled with the W-15.
The seven-time world champion qualified in P7 on Saturday, but took on his fifth power unit of the season, and as a result, incurred a penalty that meant he started the race from the pit lane. However, the power unit did little to help his cause as the Briton continued to struggle with his car.
Despite gaining some positions in the initial part of the race, Hamilton still found himself outside the points positions and, as a result, was unable to add to his points tally at the time of writing. Through the qualifying sessions, the British driver experienced issues with the tires on his car, and on Sunday, things remained much the same.
To deal with the issue, his race engineer suggested different car set-ups, but to no avail. Around midway through the race, Hamilton let out his frustrations on the team radio.
He said,
“Are you seeing how I have to drive this thing?”
Race engineer Pete Bonnington replied,
“Copy that Lewis. It’s effective though.”
Hamilton’s teammate George Russell, however, had a nice outing in Baku. The British driver qualified in P5, and at the time of publishing this piece, he was running in P5, well ahead of Max Verstappen in P6.
Lewis Hamilton on struggling with his Mercedes in qualifying
Despite two FP sessions on Friday where the W-15 worked perfectly for Lewis Hamilton, things changed drastically for him on Saturday. In FP1, he claimed P2, followed by P3 in FP2. However, in Qualifying, he could only manage P7.
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Speaking about this, Hamilton said in the post-qualifying interview,
“Yesterday the car was amazing, it felt great and I honestly think it could have been at least second row today. But I came today and all of a sudden, the tires didn’t work all day.
“But I’m doing everything I normally do and more, trying absolutely everything with the tires. When we go out, most often the tires are below the window and you can’t get them up.
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