Seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton has admitted that “it was good” to be correct about Mercedes’ issues this season, with the Briton having recently hit out at the Germans for failing to listen to him.
Hamilton’s initial comments about not being listened to came after the season-opener in Bahrain, a race which team principal Toto Wolff labelled as “one of the worst days in racing”.
Wolff has since confirmed that monumental changes are set to be made to the W14, with the side’s revolutionary ‘zero sidepods’ set to be scrapped once and for all.
Whether the Brackley-based team will use Red Bull’s RB19 as inspiration remains to be seen, given that the Austrians have started the 2023 F1 season with back-to-back 1-2 finishes.
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Hamilton doesn’t believe copying Red Bull is necessarily the way to go, though, with the 38-year-old having admitted that using the same sidepods as Red Bull on the W14 “literally won’t change a thing”.
“I think we have what we have, and we’re going to continue to try to work on it and extract more from it, and we’ll see how quick that can happen, or whether that’s possible with the concept we have,” Hamilton said, as reported by Sky Sports F1.
“And then in the short term we will start to find out whether or not we’ve got to make loads of big, drastic changes, I mean there are drastic changes which we will do.
“People keep talking about getting the new sidepods on the car but it’s not as simple as that.
“You put the Red Bull sidepods on our car and it won’t change a thing, it literally won’t change a thing, it might even go slower.
“It’s about aero characteristics, it’s how the car is balanced through the corners.
“There’s so many different elements that people of course would not know because they’re not aerodynamicists and you can’t see it – there’s a lot more to it.”
Hamilton somewhat backtracked on the comments he made about the team not listening to him ahead of last weekend’s Saudi Arabian GP, where the Briton went on to claim a second consecutive P5.
However, he did confirm that himself and Mercedes did have “disagreements” but that ultimately, he is listened to by the Silver Arrows.
“I’m one of those people that always likes to be right, but I’m not always right, but in this scenario I was right,” Hamilton said.
“So it was good, it was like, ‘I told you’.
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“It’s a team collaboration. At the end of the day I’m the driver not the designer, but I’m the gateway to the car’s performance, so we’re just working on continuously trusting each other in what we try to give back.
“They do listen to me, I mean look at the success we’ve had over time, so we listen to each other.
“We’ve had our disagreements and that’s inevitable in relationships.”