Lewis Hamilton had a hugely disappointing race weekend in China. Qualifying was the absolute low point of the weekend, as Hamilton only recorded the eighteenth fastest time. Hamilton braked, causing him to lose a lot of time, and that earned him some criticism from Christian Danner.
Hamilton has been struggling with his Mercedes car all season. The British seven-time world champion is not feeling well and he appears to be counting down the days before he can switch to Ferrari. In China he performed well in the sprint race, but his qualifying was disastrous. After a braking error in the hairpin, he was unable to do much and dropped out in the first part of qualifying.
Brake
Hamilton said afterwards that changes to the set-up and the tailwind prevented him from completing the corner. Former driver Christian Danner is critical of this in conversation with Motorsport-Magazin: “It is normal that you brake in the hairpin in Shanghai. Something like that has happened to me once. But if you do this in qualifying, then the consequences were enormous. Nothing else happened there.”
Dates
Danner actually thinks that Hamilton should not look for an excuse at all. The German former driver believes that this is a kind of excuse: “Today a driver can receive all the information he needs, we are even talking about wind data. The fact that you brake too late has to do with with feeling. I don’t think you can use the wind as an excuse. As a driver you have to make sure you can deal with this. The fact that it is better to have the wind from the front than from the back is a law of physics that never changes has been on this planet. A driver of his caliber should deal with this.
