Revealed: Why 2024 Mercedes sapped Lewis Hamilton's pace

Lewis Hamilton’s last race for Mercedes after 84 grand prix victories and six world titles was a neat summation of his desultory last three seasons there. Quick in the practices at Abu Dhabi, he failed to get past the Q1 hurdle of qualifying after a bollard dislodged by a car in front of him became trapped under his car. He then staged a strong recovery to fourth in the race.

There have been tantalising glimpses of vintage Hamilton – none more so than in his record-busting ninth British Grand Prix victory – but his season cannot be considered as anything other than deeply disappointing. At times he has clearly been bewildered at his qualifying pace deficit to team-mate George Russell. Hamilton himself added to speculation in Qatar with his mischievous statement of, “I’m definitely no longer fast.”

Given that this is the same driver who was supremely fast at Silverstone and Spa and how talent doesn’t just switch off like that, a fuller explanation is required.

It’s about this generation of ground-effect cars. Running tiny ride heights front and rear, they do not pitch and dive anything like as much as previous generations of cars. This is really bad news for any driver who relies on pitch to help rotate the car into slow corners. Which, together with his braking, has always been Hamilton’s core skill. He would use the weight transfer of late heavy braking to load up the front tyres, begin the turn-in early, then as he released the brakes into the turn the front would respond super-positively, with the rear coming round just enough to give him a neutral balance early in the corner.

As ground-effect cars have evolved – with suspensions featuring ever-more anti-dive in their geometry and ever-lower ride heights – it has become increasingly difficult to make Hamilton’s technique work. In the first two seasons of the regulations – 2022 and ’23 – he was able to at least make a fair fist of it. Relative to Russell, who has a much less extreme style on corner entry, Hamilton’s qualifying was within the normal ‘noise’ of variability, an average of 0.015sec faster in ’22, 0.017sec slower in ’23. Tiny margins.

“Running ever lower moves the car further away from Lewis’s instincts

As the teams have all got a better understanding of how to limit the amplitude of the bouncing as the underfloor nears stall point at high speeds, so they have been able to run the cars ever-lower. Into ’23, the Mercedes benefited from this, just like most of the others – so moving the car even further away from Hamilton’s natural instincts and muscle memory of how he has always driven karts and racing cars in the previous three decades. But there was then a step-change development part-way through the season: an aero-elastic front wing. This was fitted to Hamilton’s car from Montreal. While this greatly improved the Mercedes, it disadvantaged Hamilton relative to Russell. Up until Canada, Hamilton’s average qualifying deficit to Russell was 0.076sec, bigger than before but still tiny. Post-Canada to the end of the season the gap ballooned to 0.314sec.

The reason an aero-elastic front wing is now such a powerful tool is that it gets you around the most stubborn limitation of these cars – which is their exaggerated difference in balance between low-speed understeer and high-speed oversteer. A front wing which will bend back its flaps at high speeds and thus de-power its effect allows you to set a more aggressive flap angle to combat the low-speed understeer without introducing high-speed oversteer. McLaren and Mercedes have led the way on this technology, McLaren on its updated car at Miami, with Mercedes following at Monaco/Canada. The performance boost was immediate on both cars.

Generally, the closer the floors are run to the ground and the greater the resultant downforce, so the more the balance moves towards understeer. The choke point of the venturi tunnels, where the underbody downforce is at its greatest, are a long way back in the car. So the flexi wing allows you to have your cake and eat it – by allowing you to lower the car even further without suffering the full adverse balance effects of doing so.

A lower rear ride height than ever before means even less dive under braking and into the slow corners. Which hurts Hamilton relative to Russell; it destroys his feeling for the car. All the previous cues to which he was unconsciously reacting as he made his inputs were now almost entirely gone. Furthermore, as he tried then to get the rotation by using the throttle, he was overheating his rear tyres.

The two races in which Hamilton was genuinely quick – Silverstone and Spa – were fast corner tracks, where there is virtually no variation in technique, as there is way less weight transfer involved.

That, in a nutshell, has been the root of Hamilton’s struggles. There has been a false ceiling put upon the value of one of his previous areas of advantage. It’s up to the driver to adapt but that doesn’t alter the fact that the cars have evolved in a way which has neutralised the value of a technique which used to buy him lap time. If there is any component of age in the deterioration of his form, perhaps it’s how our ability to adapt can diminish.

A key question heading into ’25 and Hamilton’s new chapter as a Ferrari driver is whether the Scuderia can give him a car which will allow him to express his natural way of driving. Or whether this year’s not been so much about a Mercedes trait as a current generation F1 car trait.

Paddock talk

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Max Verstappen on George Russell after receiving a one-place grid penalty at the Qatar Grand Prix

“It has been probably the longest year of my life, knowing from the beginning I was leaving”

After Abu Dhabi, Lewis Hamilton reflects on his heart-wrenching final season with Mercedes

“To Zak, Andrea and the men and women at McLaren, congratulations”

Christian Horner at Abu Dhabi proving that good sportsmanship is not as dead as some would believe