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F1 fans were left disappointed after Lewis Hamilton finished the FP2 session at the 2024 Australian GP in P18.
Hamilton looked out of sorts as he was unable to put a clean lap on the timings and struggled massively with the balance of the W15. He even had a few off-track excursions that damaged his wheel-borough and parts of his floor, which forced him to return to the pits.
Speaking to F1.com, Lewis Hamilton claimed that the session was 'one of the worst he had experienced' and he did not have confidence in the car. He said:
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“I obviously don’t feel great. We had one of the worst sessions I’ve probably had for a long time. P1 generally felt quite good; the car actually in P1, run one, felt the best it’s ever felt, then it just got worse and worse. I made some changes, big changes into… well, we made some big changes into P2, and it was tough.”
“After that session, I feel the least confident I’ve ever felt with this car, but there are positives from that P1 run that we did," Hamilton added.
F1 fans took to social media to give their reactions to Hamilton's comments on X, with one fan claiming that the Mercedes driver was past his prime. He said:
"Nah he's just washed now. Simple. He was the reason I began watching f1 and now he's becoming my reason to not enjoy it. Seeing him fall away like this is becoming so painful."
Here are some more reactions:
While some fans had a more positive outlook on the performance:
Mercedes team boss chimes in on Lewis Hamilton's struggles in FP2
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff stated that the team experimented massively with the setup heading into the FP2 session, but it did not yield the results that they had hoped.
Speaking with Sky Sports, Wolff said:
“Well, we have achieved experiments, but we haven’t unlocked performance. In the second session, I think we’ve gone through a quite dramatic setup change for Lewis. And that has massively backfired. But this is why we’re having those sessions.”
Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes would hope that they could find a better setup for the car heading into FP3 and qualifying on Saturday so that it doesn't hamper any more performance.
The gap between the seven-time world champion and his teammate George Russell, who finished P6 in the session, is certainly alarming for fans.
