Damon Hill pinpoints glaring flaw in Lewis Hamilton’s skill-set at F1 Dutch GP
The Mercedes driver endured a disappointing weekend at the F1 Dutch Grand Prix, qualifying in 13th then finishing the race sixth.
Hamilton insisted “the team’s call” to use slick tyres, in contrast to most of the grid, cost him a possible victory.
But ex-F1 driver Hill told Sky afterwards: “It seems to me that when all the confusion is out of the way, and he just gets on with driving, then he’s the fastest driver.
“But when there are lots of decisions to make, and there’s a bit of confusion between what the team wants and what he wants, then it makes him a little bit hesitant.”
George Russell also vented his anger via Mercedes’ team radio after slipping to 18th when he pitted, after his tyre strategy also backfired.
Hill said: “It was raining quickly and very hard.
“The driver also has a responsibility to give a clue about what’s going on.
“You can see, when you go around, you should’ve been able to see that there was rain coming.
“It may have been possible to say: Listen, I’m coming in, we’re not going to get it round another lap’.
“And so there is some responsibility on the driver.
“I had a race at Donington where it was raining, drizzling, dry, drizzling - Aryton Senna famously won it by a country mile because he stayed out on one set of tyres!
“You’re only ever a fraction of a second from getting it right. And who can predict the weather?”
Sky’s Bernie Collins, who is th ex-strategy engineer for Aston Martin, said about Mercedes: “They clearly went into the race with the mindset that it wasn’t going to rain, or it wouldn’t be for long.
“Because Lewis was the only car to start on that medium tyre.
“Everyone else had perhaps an inkling that the soft was better for the first few laps until the rain came.
“They were the only team to diverge from that.
“There was a lot of hope on driver radios that it was survivable, they would get through the rain, it didn’t need an inter tyre.
“But you need to react to the pace that someone like Max or Checo showed on that inter, how quick they were on it.”
