Mark Hughes on why Hamilton is inferior to Russell

In the eight rounds of the season so far, George Russell has qualified ahead of Lewis Hamilton seven times, and the seven-time world champion has only been faster in Japan. British journalist Mark Hughes tried to find out in the pages of The Race why…

Such statistics give rise to several assumptions, not least because according to Hamilton himself he does not expect to be able to beat his teammate in qualifying this year.

But what’s really going on?

Before we try to understand the reasons for Lewis’ decline in qualifying form in his final season at Mercedes, we need to look at the size of his lead. It should also be noted that the Mercedes drivers are very close in this indicator: they are second and only second after the McLaren duo.

Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri are separated by an average of 0.042 seconds. In the case of Mercedes, Russell is only 0.062 seconds ahead of Hamilton. Therefore, despite the score of 7:1 in favor of George, one should not exaggerate its importance.

But it still means something. However small the difference in result was, Russell was ahead of his teammate much more often than in previous years.

Teammate speed

George was also ahead last season: 12:9, and the average difference was 0.017 seconds. Hamilton only showed better results than his teammate in qualifying in 2022.

In general, their results in all those years differed from joint performance for Mercedes by a few hundredths of a second. It should be noted that Russell remains one of the best drivers in the championship, very fast and capable of fighting for the championship title if given a sufficiently competitive car.

But the peculiarities of perception in Formula 1 are such that impressions often lag behind the real image. For example, everyone only appreciated Lando Norris’s talent now, when the McLaren car became really fast.

Russell is in a similar situation. It is worth recalling that in 2021 he showed the second fastest time in rain qualifying at Spa, driving a Williams – only exceptional drivers can do this. George is a world-class professional, and this must be understood when making comparisons between him and Hamilton.

Machine properties

Lewis’s skill throughout his long career is associated with the ability to brake very late, but at the same time he still manages to change the direction of the car and enter the corner. It senses perfectly how to brake, what grip the tires have on the road surface, so that it manages to take corners without locking the wheels, maintains a reasonably high speed and keeps the car on the right trajectory.

But in Monaco he literally said the following: “The car doesn’t want to turn. The slower the turn, the worse she gets into it.

Of course, both Mercedes drivers faced this problem, but it turned out that due to certain features of the behavior of the W15, one of Hamilton’s main advantages was neutralized.

Age factor

Someone could also ask a very obvious question: perhaps this number of qualifying matches suggests that Lewis is losing speed as he approaches 40.

The age factor affects different riders differently, but a certain threshold still may not occur at age 40, but only in five to seven years. It has long been known that reaction speed does not have much impact on one’s ability to drive a race car quickly. It is not about reactions, but about sensations.

More fundamental is the question of desire and motivation. The significance of what happened in Abu Dhabi in 2021 cannot be underestimated – for Hamilton it was a huge blow, especially as its consequences came on top of the decline in the Mercedes team’s competitiveness.

Richard Petty, the legendary NASCAR driver who was much older than Hamilton, once described how he felt in the final years of his career: “Inside the bubble I was in, it felt exactly the same as it always had, except it seemed like the movement of that somehow slowed down the bubble.”

Maybe something similar happens with Hamilton? Probably not, but who knows? After all, Lewis is willing to admit that in moments of doubt he himself asks the same question. But the next moment a sporting anger rises within him, and he once again longs to win back. In general, you shouldn’t write it off.