With a Mercedes that once again swung wildly in the first two free practices in Canada, Lewis Hamilton showed little patience and was very critical of the team's single-seater in 2022
Lewis Hamilton had another tough day in the shaky car Mercedes has built for the 2022 season. With the W13 rocking hard once again throughout the first two free practices for the Canadian GP, the seven-time world champion said that the team again carried out several different experiments on the two cars, but lamented that nothing the team does is enough to improve the performance of this year's single-seater.
"Kind of like every Friday for us, trying several different things," Hamilton said. "[We had] an experimental floorboard on my car, which didn't work. Nothing we do with that car seems to work. We tried different configurations, George and I were in opposite car configurations in TL2 to see if one worked and the other didn't," he revealed.
However, the attempt was a "disaster," in the words of Hamilton, who couldn't find his way around the car and even classified it as "unroadworthy" during TL2. After the sessions, the Brit made it clear that he is not at all happy with the moment he is experiencing in Formula 1 - and with little hope for improvement.
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"I'll wait to hear, but for me, it was a disaster," he admitted. "It's like the car is getting worse. [I'm] getting more and more unhappy about it. We'll keep working on it. I think this is the car for the season. So we have to hang in there and work hard on building a better car for next year," he lamented.
Without mincing words, Hamilton was highly critical of the difficulty of driving the Mercedes single-seater, in his words "the worst he's ever had" in a race in Canada. The British driver listed some of the car's problems and said he was just trying to stay away from a crash.
"You lean on the zebra and the car flies, it's so stiff," he complained. "Here, you have to use the zebras. It's not the same Montreal I'm used to and have experienced throughout my career. It's the worst thing I've ever felt in any car here. Hopefully over the course of the night we can change something, but it's something about the fundamentals of the car, and we're going to suffer," he acknowledged.
"It's just a monumental struggle the whole time to keep it off the wall," he criticized. "When the car gets off the ground and comes back, it goes in totally different directions. So you're left trying to hold a car that bounces, wobbles... It's tough. I made it through the day. I had some ice baths for my back," he finished.