Lewis Hamilton, the British driver from Mercedes AMG in Formula 1, faced significant challenges during the Japanese Grand Prix. Hamilton revealed that damage suffered during a restart caused “huge oversteer” in his car, affecting his performance in the race. Despite starting ahead of his teammate George Russell, Hamilton dropped to ninth place. The Mercedes team initially chose to use the Medium tire, but a collision involving Alex Albon and Daniel Ricciardo led to a change in strategy. Both Hamilton and Russell struggled with the Hard compound tire, prompting Mercedes to adopt a two-stop strategy and switch back to the Medium tire for the final part of the race. Throughout the race, Hamilton struggled with the car’s handling due to damage sustained in a maneuver by Charles Leclerc of Ferrari on the second lap. Hamilton mentioned that he couldn’t turn the car correctly in the corners, allowing Russell to overtake him. Mercedes was forced to make two stops with the Hard tire due to the tire allocation available for the race, while Red Bull and Ferrari had two sets of Medium tires. Hamilton criticized the Hard tire, describing it as a disastrous choice for the unpredictable Mercedes W15 car. He believed that having two sets of Medium tires would have been a better option. However, Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff remained optimistic about the team’s competitiveness, stating that they had made significant progress despite the challenging first stint.
