“The car’s really bad, mate” - Lewis Hamilton’s scathing review of Mercedes’ W15 despite Toto Wolff’s recent words of optimism

Lewis Hamilton was left scratching his head during the FP1 session at the 2024 F1 Chinese GP as he claimed that the W15 was 'really bad' around the Shanghai International Circuit on Friday.

The seven-time world champion was acutely aware of the importance of the FP1 session as it was the only practice session for the drivers throughout the three days, since it was the first of two consecutive Sprint weekends.

The Mercedes driver struggled to extract the maximum performance and never really got hold of his car as he finished in P18 around two and a half seconds behind the pace-setter Lance Stroll.

During the FP1 session, Lewis Hamilton expressed his frustration with the car on his team radio and told his engineer Peter Bonnington:

“Yeah, the car’s really bad, mate."

To which Bono replied:

“Copy Lewis we’re seeing a lot of that. We’ll get some data on consecutives.”

Heading into China, Hamilton had spoken about the team getting a better understanding of the package and utilizing it best to extract the maximum performance.

Lewis Hamilton previews the Chinese GP this weekend

Lewis Hamilton has stated that the team hasn't brought upgrades to the Chinese GP but pointed out that they have a better understanding of the W15 from Suzuka that may pay dividends during the Sprint weekend.

Speaking with Sky Sports, the Mercedes driver said:

"Nothing's changed with our car, so it's going be the same car this weekend, but we understand it a little bit more. We look at the last weekend. We did make improvements, and so we’re bringing some of those learnings into this weekend and then on top of that some new direction.

"I think if we could go back, we would have done things differently. That's the benefit of hindsight and experience, so we'll try and bring that here this weekend and see if we can implement some of those changes. Hopefully, that can find us some performance."

There was optimism heading into the Chinese GP weekend for Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes as they have been mighty successful in Shanghai in the past. They have won every single race in the Turbo-Hybrid era bar one in 2018, with the seven-time world champion winning on six occasions in his career.

With Sprint qualifying later in the day, the Brit would hope that the team could make certain adjustments to the car that might make it competitive for the all-important session.