Ferrari driver Lewis Hamilton once again had to watch on as his teammate Charles Leclerc came out on top of their intra-team battle at the Canadian Grand Prix.
Lewis Hamilton outqualified Charles Leclerc on Saturday after the Monegasque driver was caught out on his final flying lap on Saturday.
The Canadian Grand Prix has been a happy hunting ground for Hamilton, having won in Montreal on seven previous occasions.
However, the seven-time world champion is still waiting for his first podium as a Ferrari driver.
For the first time in Hamilton’s 18-season F1 career, he’s now failed to record a top-three finish in the opening 10 races of a campaign, excluding Sprint events.
Danica Patrick was stunned by one of Hamilton’s comments during the race weekend in Canada, but he had reasons to be positive going into Sunday’s race.
The podium was in sight for Hamilton when he was sitting on the grid, but by the time he entered the pits for the first time, it was once again a pipe dream.
Leclerc became increasingly frustrated with his strategy, and while Hamilton wasn’t exactly blessed by a perfectly timed pit stop, he was dealing with far greater issues in the car that team principal Fred Vasseur will be very concerned about.
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Lewis Hamilton had ‘no rear’ and brake issues throughout the Canadian Grand Prix
Hamilton was told by race engineer Riccardo Adami that he had lost 20 points of downforce at the start of the race.
Martin Brundle suggested while commentating for Sky Sports F1 that this was set to lose Hamilton 0.5 seconds per lap.
It’s unclear what happened to Hamilton’s car to lose that downforce, but on top of that, Hamilton was left lost for words as to what was going wrong with his car.
He said: “Is that rear down for us? Because the rear is loose,” to which he received the reply, “It’s quite balanced.”
Later in the race, Hamilton reported: “Yeah, it’s pretty insane. I’ve lost so much time behind those guys.”
“Why is this car so slow,” was Hamilton’s next confused message which was followed up with, “Out of power, out of pace, boys.”
“Yeah, I’ve got no rear,” Hamilton told Adami next before reporting, “Brake pedal is getting low. Yeah, I’m running out of brakes.
“Yeah, I can’t stop the car,” said Hamilton which led to Adami stating: “I do see the brake pedal getting long, as you say. I’m trying to live with it.”
“Where have I lost 25 seconds?” asked Hamilton when told how far behind Leclerc he was, despite starting three positions ahead of the Monegasque driver, highlighting just how bad the problems were for the 40-year-old.
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It speaks volumes that Hamilton’s old race engineer Peter Bonnington had just guided Andrea Kimi Antonelli to one of his best results in Formula 1 while Hamilton was once again struggling with the Scuderia.
Hamilton was left confused by Ferrari’s tactics during qualifying when he didn’t quite understand their tyre strategy.
It’s been a common theme throughout the season and while Hamilton has downplayed any issues, it’s hard to ignore that both the seven-time world champion and Leclerc regularly have disagreements over the team radio during races.
These are relatively common across every team, but when Ferrari continue to underperform, it means every potential issue is more closely studied as people try to work out exactly what’s going wrong.
