Hamilton: ‘Nothing we change on the car makes a difference’

A downbeat Lewis Hamilton admitted that Mercedes are yet to find a set-up to boost the struggling W13 at Albert Park.

The opening practice session of the Australian Grand Prix was somewhat positive for Mercedes, Hamilton setting the seventh-fastest time, but come FP2 he was down to P13 at the chequered flag, the gap to the top growing from 1.2 to 1.5 seconds.

There is little sign then that Mercedes’ problems have eased after moving on from the Middle East, but Hamilton was particularly subdued when he faced the media after the Friday running.

He would admit that the W13 is a “tricky car”, which does not seem to be responding to anything the team try in a bid to make it more competitive.

A tricky #FP2 in cooling conditions, to wrap up Friday at the #AusGP – work to do, so we'll dig into the data tonight pic.twitter.com/KNnSwsYcPe

— Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team (@MercedesAMGF1) April 8, 2022

Asked if he felt tired or jaded, Hamilton replied: “No I feel good, I feel okay, it was a difficult session.

“It’s just nothing you change on the car makes a difference at the moment, so that’s the difficult thing you know, you’re getting very optimistic and then you make changes and then it doesn’t seem to be wanting to improve.

“We made some changes going into P2 [Practice 2], P1 was better and P2 ended up being a bit harder for us. So I don’t know, just a tricky car.”

Hamilton tried pushing his set-up to the extreme in Jeddah in a bid to tap into more performance, but it would backfire and result in a shock Q1 elimination.

But he does not believe that any of this tinkering at the Australian Grand Prix will leave Mercedes struggling to find their way back, instead, the W13 is what it is and they must just do what they can with it.

“