Rival claims Lewis Hamilton is ‘quick to complain these days’
Lewis Hamilton has been “spoiled” by his past success with Nico Hulkenberg saying these days he’s a driver who is “quick to complain”.
Adding a second World title to his tally in 2014, Hamilton started an eight-year run in which he didn’t finish lower than second place in the Drivers’ Championship with his stats reading six Drivers’ titles and two runner-up results from 2014 to 2021.
In the two years in which he was runner-up, 2016 and 2021, he was in the fight until the very end when he lost the title at the final race of the season.
Lewis Hamilton ‘a little spoiled by success’
That impressive record came to an end last year when the Briton was only P6 in his zero-pod W13, Hamilton making his frustrations over the lack of performance from the car well known.
It’s been a similar story this season, although fair to say better since the introduction of the B-spec W14, with Hamilton was not happy with his car at the Austrian Grand Prix when he complained several times that it wouldn’t turn into the corners as well as questioning his time penalty for exceeding track limits.
His team boss Toto Wolff came on the radio to say: “The car is bad, we know. Please drive it.”
Asked by Servus TV for his thoughts on Hamilton’s complaints, Haas driver Hulkenberg says he reckons the 38-year-old has been “spoiled” by driving some of the best cars on the grid.
“你不得不说刘易斯有点被宠坏的年代uccess,” grandpx.news quotes him as having said. “He’s a guy who’s quick to complain these days.”
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Hamilton crossed the line to seventh place at the Red Bull Ring before being demoted to P8 for track limit violations.
Mercedes’ trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin explained that it was understeer that led to his complaints about not being able to turn the car, and ultimately his penalty.
“If you were watching the race, you may have heard him talk about understeer in the high-speed corners and some of the very fast corners are at the end of the lap,” Shovlin explained in Mercedes’ post-Austria debrief.
“The problem with understeer is when you carry the speed in, you haven’t really got the ability to tighten the line if you need to.
“The simple issue for him was the combination of the nature of the corner and the kerb.
“The fact that he had this balance issue where the car wasn’t turning strongly enough as he wound the lock on meant that on a number of occasions he just ran wide, just drifted over that line and ultimately, that was what caused the penalty.”
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