It was well and truly a season finale to forget for Lewis Hamilton, whose luck at the Yas Marina Circuit continues to be woeful.
After losing the 2021 Drivers’ Championship through a ‘human error’ as judged by the FIA, the 37-year-old suffered a disappointing retirement from the season finale, marking the end of his troubling relationship with the W13.
Somewhat incredibly, Hamilton’s retirement in the closing laps of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix was the Germans first technical based one of the season, highlighting how reliable the W13 was at least.
Reliable, it certainly was, strong; it certainly wasn’t, with Hamilton having endured a winless campaign which was cemented with his lowest ever finish in the Drivers’ Championship.
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The seven-time World Champion’s late retirement was as a result of a hydraulic leak as revealed by the team’s motorsport strategy director James Vowles, and crucially had nothing to do with his opening lap incident with Carlos Sainz.
Starting fifth, Hamilton made an excellent start and quickly overtook Sainz at the opening corner.
However, the Spaniard had an excellent run on the Brit down the main straight, before diving down the inside of him at Turn Six.
Sainz managed to stop his F1-75 within the limits of the circuit, whereas Hamilton opted to cut across the following Turn Seven.
This saw the Mercedes driver bounce heavily over a huge sausage kerb, before oddly re-joining the circuit ahead of the Ferrari driver.
It wasn’t long until Mercedes asked Hamilton to give the position back, perhaps in anticipation that he would get a penalty.
Hamilton did get back past the Spanish driver moments later, before suddenly suffering from a lack of power following a depleted battery.
From then on it was a lonely race for him, before his late retirement.
Vowles revealed that actually Hamilton suffered “little damage” from the impact with the sausage kerb which had “no relation” to his late race retirement.
“Short answer: No,” revealed Vowles.
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“There was surprisingly little damage from that first lap incident.
“The bib, the area under the car did take a massive impact as a result of it and that won’t be good. The front wing endplate again had a knock but, generally speaking, it was fine aerodynamically.
“What happened at the end of the race is actually a loss of hydraulic pressure and had no relation or no bearing to that first lap incident.”