History repeating itself as Lewis Hamilton’s ‘spikes’ of hope for Merc ‘disappear’

Lewis Hamilton has lamented his Mercedes F1 car for having “spikes” of promise that “disappear” in echoes of previous struggles in recent seasons.

The seven-time world champion could only qualify 11th at the Australian Grand Prix as teammate George Russell took seventh to out-pace Hamilton for the third successive race this year.

Hamilton, who got within 0.1 seconds of Charles Leclerc’s pace-setting Ferrari in final practice, admitted to feeling “flat” after his worst qualifying in Melbourne since 2010.

"Every outing you learn something new," Hamilton said. "FP3 felt really good for us, and I felt really optimistic going into qualifying but then, I don't know if it's the wind picking up, the wind picked up quite a bit, same as yesterday, and then the car is just so much more on a knife edge.

"It's three years in a row a similar feeling. But then there's these spikes of 'Oh, it could be good' like this morning. And then it kind of disappears.

"If we can work a way of finding that goodness in the car and making it more consistent and holding onto that, maybe we can be more competitive. But there's a lot of work we need to do but everyone's working as hard as they can.”

Hamilton admitted the inconsistencies in the W15 “really messes with the mind". 

With Mercedes seemingly still struggling to understand the airflow under the car in the current ground-effect regulations, Hamilton is once again conducting set-up experiments in a bid to unlock more performance.

"In 2022, we weren't splitting [set-ups]," Hamilton explained. "George was doing one thing. I was trying every set-up there was to try and help the team find options and figure out how we could fix it.

"It's pretty much the same, a little bit similar to this year. I've tried lots of different things. But I think this weekend we're much closer."