14/10/2019
NEWS STORY
While it might please the sport's owners, who, let's face it, come from a media background, there are times when one wonders whether Formula One is really the 'pinnacle of motorsport' or just another daytime soap opera.
Seemingly week after week we are now treated to Charles Leclerc complaining that "it's not fair", Max Verstappen essentially saying 'I can do it but he can't, drivers snitching on rivals and Lewis Hamilton questioning his team's tactics.
Indeed, it was somewhat ironic yesterday that as Mercedes celebrated an unprecedented sixth successive constructor's title, Hamilton, who is one the verge of his own sixth crown, was criticising his team for, among other things, its lack of guidance.
For the third successive race the Briton openly called his team's strategy into question, first asking why he was pitted three laps after his teammate, then why Mercedes had elected to fit mediums as opposed to hards, and finally, in the wake of the switch to mediums, not being guided to manage his tyres better as he sought to overhaul Sebastian Vettel, who, like Valtteri Bottas, was one a two-stop strategy.
"That was just a f***-up," the Briton complained to his engineer, Pete Bonnington. "How have I lost that much time? I am basically out of the race."
In the moments after the race, the Briton's mood was no better, in a testy trackside interview with Paul di Resta, when asked if he is expecting to be battling his teammate for the remaining races, Hamilton snapped: "It makes no difference because we've been racing freely all year".
And when asked, at the subsequent FIA press conference, if he was kicking himself after making the second stop, wondering whether he could have got to the end of the race on the mediums, he replied: "Honestly, I'm thinking of what I'm going to eat tonight...
"I'm thinking about I can't wait to get back to the UK to see my niece and nephew," he added.
"What's done is done," he continued. "Naturally we'll go and sit and talk to the engineers and strategists. I think today could have been done better. There's multiple scenarios during the year when that's been the case but nonetheless, Valtteri did the job. I'd have had to have driven differently in that second stint, stretch out as far as you can... naturally when I was in the lead I thought about staying out but by the time I'd already pushed so much to close the gap to Seb... we should have at least got a one-two today but I think the strategy wasn't optimum for me. It was naturally optimum for Valtteri but yeah, there were a lot scenarios.
"Valtteri had a very good gap to the first stint. He didn't have to stop early because he clearly had a good enough gap. They should have stopped me before Seb to undercut him but it's always an afterthought. Often the first car gets priority which is always how we've always had it but we can do better as a team, to make sure we score more one-twos, so we'll just work hard on that and there's no love lost or anything like that. We'll be pushing hard."
Asked if he could have got to the end of the race on that one-stop, he said: "With better guidance I think I probably could have.
"They said, when they put the tyre on, that we are going a two stop because the degradation is high. So then, just the direction I was given in terms of having to try and close the gap to Seb. So every time I was having to close this gap, so used the tyres quite a lot. So, in how I was using them, there was no way I was going to make it to the end on that.
"If I had, from the beginning, said we're just going to eke it out and just see if we could manage it, then I could have just driven differently and, potentially, held it to the end - but all in hindsight."
"I am not hurt at all," said Toto Wolff, when asked about Hamilton's comments. "Every driver is keen to maximise every opportunity to win and when that doesn't happen it is frustrating."
Check out our Sunday gallery from Suzuka, here.