Disqualified but energized: Hamilton and Mercedes take hope from the US GP

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AUSTIN, TX — “We just needed a couple of more laps, Lewis.”

Pete Bonnington had a spring and lift in his voice as Lewis Hamilton crossed the line for second place in the United States Grand Prix.

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For a driver and engineer pairing that has won more than 80 Formula One races since 2013, P2 is not a position to celebrate with much fervor or passion.

Hamilton’s late pursuit of Verstappen ended in a narrow, 2.2-second defeat, as the Red Bull driver scored his 15th grand prix win of the season and the 50th of his career.

The strength of Hamilton’s performance would later be stripped of its material worth when his car failed a post-race technical inspection. The plank on the underbody of the Mercedes W14 was thinner than the required minimum thickness of 9mm, resulting in disqualification. Charles Leclerc was disqualified for the same infringement, losing his sixth place finish.

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It was a bitter end to what has otherwise been the most encouraging weekend of Hamilton’s and Mercedes’s season. The pace was not only there to compete at the front. Hamilton could have won.

“This is definitely the most positive I’ve felt this year,” Hamilton said, prior to the news, his car had failed the technical check and lost second place.

A step in performance and confidence

The signs were there when Hamilton drove his first lap in practice on Friday at the Circuit of The Americas. An updated floor was fitted to Hamilton’s and teammate George Russell’s cars as Mercedes’ last major upgrade of the season. Mercedes hoped not only to improve performance but help its development direction going into next year.

Second place was Hamilton’s best result since the Spanish Grand Prix in early June, making the performance gain clear. And it was on merit. “It’s a solid second,” he said. “It’s not ‘just’ making second — it was a solid second.”

Perhaps more important is the improved feeling Hamilton had in the Mercedes W14. He could throw the car into the corners and know it would stick thanks to a more comfortable balance, which had given him greater confidence — something he’s lacked at points this year.

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“It was only a tenth (of a second) upgrade, for example, but there’s at least a tenth of confidence that it gave me,” Hamilton explained. “So it’s quite interesting what you see when you have a double knock-on effect.”

It was a needed breakthrough for Hamilton and Mercedes. 2023 has, in Hamilton’s words, “not been a terrible year,” but it has fallen well below the team’s expectations. The pain of 2022, the first winless campaign of Hamilton’s 16-season F1 career, motivated Mercedes to right the wrongs of last year’s car — only for the first qualifying of the year in Bahrain to make clear its efforts had fallen far short.

Although Mercedes brought a stream of updates for the car through this year, most notably abandoning the slim sidepod concept in Monaco, Hamilton said Austin was “the first weekend that I’ve really felt the upgrades work.”

“I know how hard everyone is working back at the factory,” he added. “But it’s nice to finally start to see the rewards of their hard work and to feel it in the car as well.”

How Hamilton could have won

Being disqualified from second place will hurt Hamilton and Mercedes. Yet they could have lost a first victory in almost two years because of the plank wear – surely a crueler, more gutting scenario.

Hamilton passed the Ferraris of Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc to run P2 after six laps, the gap to early leader Lando Norris hovering around three seconds. Towards the end of the stint, he made inroads on the McLaren, reducing the gap to 1.6 seconds before Norris pitted at the end of Lap 17. This was in response to Verstappen, who’d come in at the end of Lap 16 to try and get the undercut as he struggled with a brake issue.

“This is definitely the most positive I’ve felt this year,” Hamilton said. (David Buono/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Instead of pitting Hamilton on the same lap as Norris to cover off Verstappen — who was four seconds behind Hamilton before stopping — Mercedes decided to keep him out a few laps longer. Red Bull told Verstappen it thought Hamilton may be attempting a one-stop strategy, stretching the stint out.

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Mercedes considered that, but when the pit wall saw Hamilton’s times start to drop off massively, it had to bring him in at the end of Lap 20. A slow pit stop didn’t help matters.

The four-lap tire offset created by staying out a bit longer was intended to help Hamilton attack Norris. But staying out allowed Verstappen to gain track position as he completed a series of quick laps on his new tires. Hamilton went from leading Verstappen by four seconds to trailing by six, leaving him confused by the strategy.

“We just lost too much time in extending and really dropped off a cliff in performance,” Hamilton explained. “Then, when I came out, these guys were miles up the road. When Max came into the pits, he wasn’t even close to me.”

If Mercedes had pitted the same lap as Norris, it would have kept Hamilton ahead of Verstappen on the track and put him in a straight fight, car versus car, driver versus driver. Instead, his offset strategy set up a late charge on mediums where he passed Norris and then fell a few laps short of getting Verstappen at the line.

Had that first pit stop been made a few laps sooner, could Hamilton have won?

“Yes, I do think we would have been in a fighting position to fight with Max,” Hamilton said. “I think we made our life a lot harder today than it probably needed to be.”

The optimism in disqualification

It’s a rough break for Hamilton and Mercedes to lose P2 in this fashion. There was no force majeure or any other circumstances they could argue. The team accepted the FIA’s ruling, and said the wear on the underbody plank was due to the bumpy track and the reduced time under the sprint weekend format to set up and check the car before the race. Running a car closer to the ground can help improve downforce, which is why the FIA sets a minimum thickness for planks and inspects them after a race.

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The 18 points lost has a big impact on both Hamilton and Mercedes. In the fight for second in the drivers’ championship, Hamilton had closed the gap to Sergio Pérez to 19 points. Now it’s 37. Mercedes’ 31-point advantage over Ferrari for P2 in the constructors’ shrinks to 21 points.

But in the long view, the weekend was full of positives. The journey Hamilton and Mercedes are currently on is not about second place. It’s about getting back to the serial title-winning juggernaut status that ruled F1 with six titles in seven years between 2014 and 2020. Sunday’s race showed the team is heading the right way.

“There’s lots of things we can improve on in terms of processes, all of us,” Hamilton said. “I definitely believe we’re going in the right direction.”

Hamilton has four more races to stop his win drought stretching beyond two seasons. Although Verstappen and Red Bull will remain incredibly hard to beat, Austin gave Hamilton hope that everything is falling into place – and that a win before the end of 2023 could happen.

“Maybe we’ll be in a position like this and we get the strategy right, and get the pit stop right,” Hamilton said. “Maybe we’ll be right on their tails and looking at some good racing. So, I’m excited.”

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(Lead image of Lewis Hamilton: Song Haiyuan/MB Media/Getty Images))

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