
© Sam Bloxham for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix ltd.
By Carol M. Creasey
After originally believing that outgoing car designer from Red Bull, Adrian Newey, might join forces with Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari in 2025, rumours abounded that Lawrence Stroll from Aston Martin was offering him a blank cheque, along with a partnership.
Newey would also be allowed to bring his own team of engineers in. Speculation continued for some time, but ultimately it was announced that Newey would join Aston Martin in the spring of 2025. Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur also confirmed that negotiations had fallen through, because Ferrari did not wish to meet the demands of Newey.
Fans of Lewis had mixed emotions about this. Some were disappointed, whereas others pointed out that Lewis had won all of his 7 titles without the input of Newey. Lewis did not pass any comment, other than stating that with only a short time left with Mercedes, he wants to finish his time there on a high.
The last two races since the second half of the season started have not been as competitive as the last few before the break, but Mercedes have worked hard to try and understand the drop in performance. Team boss Toto Wolff has announced that they have looked into this, and hopefully the car will start to perform better in the upcoming races.
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Ahead of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, Lewis was asked how he felt about Adrian Newey going to Aston Martin, and he explained that obviously it would have been very nice to have worked with him, but he is only one man, and there is a whole team of engineers involved in making a Formula 1 car fast. He also said it changes nothing, as his focus is to help Ferrari, who as a team have been unable to challenge for a championship for many years, and all his energy will be spent doing that.
As Azerbaijan race weekend started, in first free practice, Lewis came second to Verstappen, with George Russell 8th. In Free Practice 2 Lewis was 3rd, with Leclerc and Perez ahead of him. Clearly the Ferrari cars has had some improvements made to them. George was 9th.
As expected, in Qualifying the tyre problems in Q3 came back to haunt Lewis. Unfortunately, this year Lewis has had a lot of issues with getting his tyres to work in Q3, which is very frustrating for him. He ended up qualifying 7th, Russell was 5th, while Leclerc got a fine pole. Piastri was 2nd and Sainz 3rd.
Ahead of the race it was announced that Lewis had taken a new engine, so he would start from the pit lane, which meant he would have to fight his way up the field. He was optimistic that changes made to the car would allow him to do so.
When the race started Leclerc led to Piastri, then Sainz and Perez. Russell initially was overtaken by Verstappen, but later in the race he was able to get his position back. Lewis found his car completely lacking pace and balance, so he was really struggling to make headway. In the meantime, the first 3 were very close to one another, and eventually Leclerc was overtaken by Piastri. The gap was very close, but Leclerc was unable to retake his position, whereas Perez was looking strong. Ultimately an incident between Perez and Sainz took them both out of the race towards the end, which elevated Russell to 3rd and Lewis to 9th. Unfortunatley, Lewis’ struggles with the car had shown that since the summer break Mercedes has taken a step back, which is disappointing for all of the team.
Now racing resumes in Singapore, so whether Mercedes can sort out why their car is once again so difficult to drive, remains to be seen.
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