“I remember they said, like, we know what we’re doing, you’re wrong": Lewis Hamilton recounts his interaction with Mercedes engineers in 2022

The latest episode of Drive to Survive is already available to select media, and features Lewis Hamilton sharing his frustration with the design of the Mercedes challenger. In an episode revolving around Mercedes' struggles in the ground effect era, Hamilton recounts a contentious interaction with the team's engineers.

Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton had dominated the sport from 2014 until 2021. From 2022 onwards, the team has stuggled under the new regulations.

The German outfit introduced a radically different no-sidepod concept in 2022, a solution that nobody else had tried to implement. When it failed in 2022, Mercedes was expected to switch things up and go to a more conventional approach.

However, Mercedes persisted with the zero sidepod concept in 2023, which again proved to be a massive failure. After the first race of the season, Hamilton put the design team on blast, saying that his opinions were not heard during the designing of the car.

In the Netflix series, the Briton reiterates the same thing, recounting one of his interactions with Mercedes personnel. In the show, he says:

“I remember complaining to the team and being like, look, we have to make these changes, otherwise this is the trajectory we’re going to go on and this is where we’re going to end up. Please, please do something about it."

He adds:

“I remember they said, like, we know what we’re doing, you’re wrong. And that was definitely an interesting moment. I was like, okay, I’ll step back, don’t want to step on anybody’s toes. Then when we got into the season, then we spoke again [they said] ‘oh, maybe you were right.”

"I think we have a better process" - Lewis Hamilton on his growing relationship with Mercedes engineers

Lewis Hamilton had mellowed his stance on the car's design as the season continued. The driver had put together a brilliant year, where he was clearly the better driver of the two at Mercedes and had even picked up a pole position.

By the end of the season, Hamilton was looking forward to 2024 as the team continued to make improvements. As quoted by Racefans, he had said:

“I do continue to have lots of meetings back to the factory on so many different topics about the car, whether it’s ride quality, whether its vehicle dynamics, whether it’s suspension, whether it’s steering, whether it’s about tyres, whatever it may be. So we’ll continue to have that and I think we have a better process than we’ve ever had before."

It does, however, make you question how sure Lewis was about Mercedes ability to bounce back to the front especially since his premature signing with Ferrari came as a surprise.