Lewis Hamilton says Mercedes must risk having “people break” under pressure in pursuit of victory after enduring its second consecutive season out of title contention.
The previously unstoppable Mercedes team has been anonymous since the change of regulations in 2022.
Having won eight consecutive constructors championships in 2014–21 with 111 wins — an average of just under 14 per season — the German giant has claimed just one win and 24 other podiums from the last 44 races.
It improved from third in last year’s standings to second this year but saw its points tally decline from 515 to 409.
Hamilton has felt the slide most keenly. The seven-time champion had never gone a full calendar year without at least one race win in his entire car racing career before 2022. He hasn’t won a grand prix since the penultimate round of 2021 in Saudi Arabia.
Mercedes made some major errors in its approach to the regulatory era beginning last season. It debuted a car that looked strikingly different to its rivals late in preseason testing in 2022 but was never able to access the theoretically significant levels of downforce the wind tunnel suggested it could produce.
Fundamentally it was hampered by a very narrow set-up window practically unachievable at almost every circuit.
The team doubled down in 2023, adamant that the philosophy still had goodness in it, but from as early as preseason testing it was clear that the car had carried over too many of the bad traits of its predecessor.
Team boss Toto Wolff said after the first race in Bahrain that the team had already decided that its car concept was a dead end, effectively writing off the campaign with 21 rounds to go.
Meanwhile McLaren has surged, Aston Martin has joined the frontrunners and even Ferrari has appeared close to making a breakthrough return to victory contention.
Hamilton, who has re-signed with Mercedes for two years in the hope it can return to championship fitness and deliver him a record-breaking eighth title, said the team’s back was rightly up against the wall, with the buck stopping at Wolff’s door.
“There’s a huge amount of pressure on the team for sure,” he said, per The Race. “Not just Toto but globally, all of us. Everyone back at the factory, a huge amount of pressure on them.
“Ultimately, as a boss like Toto you have to start leaning on people more rather than backing off on them, and how you do that is not easy, as people break at a certain point.”
Hamilton conceded that the challenges of the season had left him sometimes second-guessing his own abilities, having never gone so long without mounting the top step.
“There are always going to be moments when you’re like, ‘Is it me or is it the car?’ Do you still have it? Has it gone?’
“When the magic happens — when everything comes together, the car and you — and you get that spark, it’s extraordinary, and that’s what you’re in the search for.
“It’s been kind of a zigzag line trying to frickin’ get to where we need to be. And every now and then something positive happens, you’re like, ‘Okay, that’s it’. And then it shifts, so the goalposts are always moving, which is typical.
“Sometimes it’s in the window. A lot of the time it’s out the window, and no matter what car set-up changes you make, whether it’s mechanical, roll stiffness, all those sorts of different things, you can’t overpower the aero characteristics and through-corner balance.
“There were just certain things, decisions that had been made, that just left you blocked at the end of a road, and you can’t do anything, because of the cost cap and all these different things … and you can’t change it until the car’s new in the next year.”
Hamilton’s frustration with his 2023 lot comes against the backdrop of him taking months to recommit to the team for two more seasons on a deal expiring at the end of 2025.
Protracted negotiations lasted until the end of August, leaving much room for speculation about the Briton’s motivation and possible conditions on his renewal.
He had previously expressed a desire to quit the sport before he turns 40, but his new deal will take him close to his 41st birthday in January 2026.
The spectre of his controversial last-lap 2021 championship defeat to Max Verstappen still hangs over his career, and the pursuit of his lost eighth world championship continues to drive him.
But Hamilton admitted that the longer that pursuit lasts and the more barren the journey gets, the more he wonders whether the reward outweighs the costs.
“They are long seasons. It’s a long time away from everyone, and I’ve been doing it 16 years,” he said. “It’s gruelling.
“There’s lots of glitz and glamour and a lot that’s positive, but it’s by no means freaking easy to stay at your best, to stay committed, to keep up the training, to continue to deliver constantly.
“It’s a lot of pressure, being scrutinised all the time, and I’m in a place in my life where there’s no way I can win.
“If I win a race it’s, ‘Oh, he’s a seven-time world champion with 103 wins’. If I don’t do well, it’s [a big deal].
“I can only lose at this point in life, and for sure there was a point when I was questioning whether or not I wanted to go through that.”
And though Hamilton insists that retirement isn’t on his mind, he acknowledges that he can’t predict a possible sudden evaporation of his motivation and the desire to move onto the next chapter of his life.
“You’re going to be stuck with me for a bit longer,” he said. “But there may be moments when we come across a similar year to this year — next year there’ll be that down moment and I’ll be like, ‘Shit, I’m not going past 40’.
“I can’t say. I really have no idea. It could be abrupt and I just disappear from the face of the earth. It could be I move into a different role. I really have no idea.
“I still love driving. I still love getting into the car. When they start the car up with all those people around you, the crew, you go down the pitlane, I still get this smile on my face the same as I did the first day I drove.
“If there is a day that doesn’t happen — and I hope that’s never the case — but then particularly then maybe I’ll know. But also there’ll be a point where I want to give my energy to something else or be in one place for a period of time.
“I don’t know how to do that at the moment.
“If I’m in a place for one week, I get itchy feet and I’ve got to go somewhere else and maybe that will stick with me, who knows?”
