Hamilton anticipates tough fightback from last

2016 Belgian Grand Prix

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Lewis Hamilton does not expect it will be easy for him to make his way through the field during tomorrow’s Belgian Grand Prix while facing a back row start.

The championship leader was struck with a 55-place grid penalty after Mercedes chose to strategically incur excessive power unit component penalties in a bid to ensure he does not face any such penalties for the rest of the season.

“I have a massive 55 place grid penalty today – but I also now have three new engines in the pool for the season, which is positive,” says Hamilton.

“In terms of today, it was definitely a weird qualifying session for me. There was no point in showing my pace. It was all about race preparation. The key for me is making sure I come out of tomorrow having lost the fewest points possible – and that meant having as many fresh sets of tyres available as possible and making sure the car was set up well.”

Despite having faced similar challenging starting positions throughout his time at Mercedes, Hamilton believes that it will be more difficult for him to make his way through the field tomorrow.

“We’re not easily the quickest here,” explains Hamilton. “We’re all going to have massive degradation and looking after the tyres will be a struggle for everyone.

“It’s going to be far from an easy, breezy day but where I can just pick people off. There will be lots of pit stops and who knows what else. I’m going to have to battle my way through the traffic – but I’ll give it my best as always and see where I end up.”

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Will Wood
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31 comments on “Hamilton anticipates tough fightback from last”

  1. This bothers me. I am going to leave the anti-Hamilton spiel alone since it doesn’t deserve a place here, but this still bothers me.

    If it is this “easy” to gain three extra power units in a single race, requiring zero penalties later in the season, then if I were an F1 team director I’d just grab 4 or 5 in the opening race. Heck, I might even conspire with several other teams to accomplish the same thing, and in the end, it may not hurt much — especially at Mercedes early in the season. Just use a handful of new units for both drivers, “suggest” that other Mercedes-powered teams to similarly, and viola! no Mercedes team will get a penalty all season.

    I mean, the same could be said for, say, Red Bull and any team they may have a driver (along with Torro Rosso) and the same of course would apply to Ferrari or McLaren. Basically the entire grid could do this as an F.U. to the regulations.

    1. Yes, totally agree!
      Not sure if this approach was considered when the rules and penalty schemes were agreed upon, but it does indeed make it all rather meaningless. Granted, Hamilton starts this race dead last with a 55 grid penality, but as you say, now he has not just 1 but 3 new engines for the rest of the season. So in reality hereby 2 additional new engines. My comments would btw be absolutely the same no matter the team or driver in question. This makes a mockery of the F1 rules and their intentions.

      1. If the FIA were really interested in saving costs they would dock the teams points in the manufactures standing. Significant points, maybe even 10% (+8 if 8) per power unit, and maybe a 1/4 of that per ‘system’.

        That way it doesn’t hurt the drivers, who are already handicapped in some other race due to the reliability issue, and it is a VERY strong motivation to keep teams like Mercedes from dumping on certain drivers. Imagine if Mercedes might have to face a 30 point drop if they lost a power unit in one race late in the season :)

        Also, you can lower the cost of all power units in F1 to 500,000 pounds. Any team can buy any manufactures power unit, all power units are bought using a lottery system. No one team gets ‘special’ treatment from the manufacturer of the power unit.

        You won’t see rules like these, because honestly speaking, costs are not what are being contained, what is being contained is ‘the order of things’. The FIA want Mercedes to win with ease, because they write the rules to suite their platform and don’t do anything to keep Mercedes from out spending everyone.

        ps. You can’t enforce spending caps.

        1. ps. increase the max number of power units to something like 8, and then only allow new allocations after all others are consumed, ie, no extra allocations with in the first 5-10 rounds.

        2. @xsavior, why do you persistently rewrite history in order to force it to fit with your prejudices? Even though it is documented that it was Renault who first put forward the proposed current regulation package, whilst Newey has stated on public record that much of the regulation package was written in an attempt to appease VW (the minutes from the discussions confirm that VW sent representatives to the original workshops that drafted the current regulation package), you keep ignoring the evidence that doesn’t fit with the narrative that you want to promote.

          Furthermore, as has been pointed out in the past, your system has a far more punitive impact on the smaller teams than the larger ones. If you had knocked 25% off Mercedes’s points total in 2015, they would have still won the WCC by nearly 100 points – on the other hand, if you knocked 25% off, say, Lotus’s points total, you’d demote them a place in the WCC and have a far larger impact on their TV rights income. In trying to help them, you’d be actively damaging their prospects.

          1. geoffgroom44 (@)
            28th August 2016, 12:42

            The appearance of facts in such a discussion is most alarming. But, big thanks to you, @xsavior, for introducing them.

          2. lolz. Strange way to attack a comment. I don’t really think I need to justify your strawman/side road attack. Plus you are cherry picking my argument to make your own.

            The fixed ratio does not penalize the lower teams, because they lose less points for using more engines. Fixing the price of the power trains at 500,000 does not punish the poorer teams.

            You can’t argue my points so you distort my argument and completely sidetrack it with a strawman argument.

            “As has been pointed out in the past …. my system … ” LOLzzzz
            My system, it’s conjecture, not my system. You are attacking me, and playing an association game. Don’t bother bro, you ain’t got the skillz.

      2. These rules are such a joke! I watch F1 for comedy now.

    2. They could IF, they could agree to it. But they cannot, also new units are an expensive thing for lower budget teams.

      But say Mercedes doing this with one driver at say Austria and second driver at say Spa… And do so to get 3-5 extra power units…

      No problem. And then run them harder rest of the season. McLaren did so last year quite a lot.

      Reason why top teams dont do this more often is because usually its better to start P2 with slightly worn engine than P22 with 3 new ones. But as we get down to 4 engines per entire season, and maybe someday 3 engines per season… Motivation will be higher and higher.

      1. @jureo
        “McLaren did so last year quite a lot”

        And there was no outcry?….
        As we are seeing now with Lewis…

        1. Indeed.

        2. Because last year McLaren was a joke, and everyone were seeing how quickly they’d reach double-digit component usage!

          1. Mercedes reliability with Lewis Hamilton this year and in 2014 was a joke. For sure both Nico and Lewis had issues during the race that year, but Nico’s issues have almost always come during the race (those that had meaningful implications).

        3. They were 3-5 seconds off pace… Nobody is gonna outcry about poor underdogs…

          Now with Mercedes getting 3 new sexy upgraded powerunits… People start to cry.

        4. So did Red Bull but hey, it’s Hamilton, let’s ban him from the race…

      2. They can’t do this until they exceed 6 engines. Noone really expects them to use 12 engines on the first
        week, as this this probably is around £60M of capital with no ability to upgrade later in the season as you use tokens. Mid season is the right time to play such games as the new engines have the second half upgrades.

    3. Then you can not have any upgrades during the season.

      Have fun with that.

      1. @shrieker, you have picked up on an important point there – the teams can only introduce upgrades with each new engine package, and the relaxation of the engine development restrictions in 2017 would potentially increase the penalty from having to stick with an older spec engine for longer than planned in the season.

        Already, we have seen how some teams have had to plan quite carefully when they will take an engine penalty – Ferrari announced earlier in the year (at the Canadian GP, if I recall well, when they brought forward an engine change so they could introduce their new turbocharger design) that they were going to have to take a strategic engine penalty given that Vettel and Raikkonen are both short on parts due to earlier failures (Kimi’s turbocharger failure in Australia and Vettel’s engine failure in Bahrain).

        However, they had to weight that up against when they wanted to use the last of their tokens to introduce their last upgrade package – they finally bit the bullet on that point and spent their final three tokens on an upgrade this weekend, though they won’t use their new engine until Monza. It’s a sub-optimal strategy on balance, and one that is only really being used by teams to make the worst of a bad situation when they have to take the penalty.

        Hamilton is only taking the pain this weekend because Mercedes decided that, since this weekend is quite hard on engines, they would bring a large engine upgrade package this weekend and therefore both drivers were always going to use at least one new engine each.
        It creates an interesting risk-reward issue for Hamilton given Rosberg and Hamilton currently have the same spec components (both drivers took the new engine package this weekend). However, should Mercedes use any of their remaining tokens (I think that, having used five this weekend, they have six left) and introduce an upgraded engine unit in the final part of the year, only Rosberg might be in a position to be able to use that upgrade without penalty if he hasn’t used the final engine in his component pool.

        That problem would only be exacerbated in 2017 if every new engine can be fitted with upgraded parts – you might have an initial advantage from being able to push your engines a little harder, but you would lose out in the longer term since your rival could then fit an upgraded engine down the line, leaving you to either have to accept your performance disadvantage or having to take further penalties down the line to change to the newer spec engine.

    4. I wouldn’t agree, maybe partially. The idea is to get the teams spending less money on engines. Judging by last few seasons they are trying to use as few engines as they can. Apart from Honda no other team was exploiting the rule. They are trying to get by with allowed engine count, Ham’s situation is just unfortunate.

      You talk about other strategies teams with money could adopt, but they aren’t. They know it’ll make the rules seem like a joke and will only lose in the end. Entire field wouldn’t do this because they cant afford a new engine each race. It’s one of those problems in F1 that doesn’t need fixing. Engines last longer, customer teams don’t have to spend too much as a result. Making a driver take more penalties might make it more enjoyable for an average viewer but it means reliability could decide the championship and I’d rather it didn’t.

    5. You all have to take under consideration that the way Mercedes did that cannot be applied to all teams and especially at any time in the season.. To my understanding, Hamilton will have 3 fresh PUs for the remaining of the season but those Units will be “frozen” to the current engine update. So the way Mercedes did that is the only way to go.. Mid Season, after an upgrade of the engine and with Hamilton already on the fifth engine.. Because if Hamilton was in his 3rd like Rosberg, they would have to bring the fourth , install it in FP1 for free, then the 5th , install it in FP2 for free and then start taking penalties with the 6th in FP3 and I am not sure if it’s possible (time) to make a change again for the Qualifying for the 7th..
      So it may now seem that Hamilton is the “best guy” in the Paddock but if this upgrade develops a problem that will require the rest of the tokens to get rectified , then he will be stuck with 3 fresh problematic PUs…
      And take under consideration that the only teams capable of doing what Mercedes did, are the ones that build their own engine.. Because every other team would have to buy 3 extra units in one grand prix and gamble that those units will not develop a problem after an untested upgrade..
      And don’t forget that the team doing wouldn’t mind loosing a few points in the championship..
      All in all I think that this was a “perfect storm” and that it will not be sth that we will see happening that often in the future..

      1. Jean-Christophe
        27th August 2016, 20:47

        At last someone’s come up with a more reasonable analysis. Packing up engines is not something you want to do on a whim. Even for teams that build their own engines, it’s still comes with a cost. Rules are like law. You will never make them cover every situation

      2. Sorry but if Hamilton has the latest upgrade and there are reliability issues, thenHamilton is not stuck with those engines as he will do the same and get Three more engines with the problematic issue fixed. The good thing about this is that Hamilton will not be able to pass all the cars as easy as he would like. Perhaps he will finish behind rosberg, red bull, and even Ferrari. They though this race was going to be a walk in the park and did not see how close the red bulls are and even Ferrari.

        1. It’s obvious that Mercedes went for a race setup in both cars. Redbull split strategy by having Max on a qualifying setup hence he’s closer to Rosberg’s race setup pace. RIC is on a race setup like HAM and ROS. Merc is more worried that with a race/qualy optimal setup, that ROS may not be able to overtake Ferrari or RB if his start is not perfect, which has been the case more often than not. Just wait and you’ll see. HAM has hidden his setup so far but we know it is an obvious race/overtake choice.

      3. Hence so far only Mercedes and McHonda have done it. Mercedes in one blow undid reliability damage of Ham early troubles… But it did cost them many points impossible to regain.

        Reliable engine is still the way to go.

        1. they haven’t undone any reliability damage, Lewis still lost all those points at the beginning of the season ,and hes going to lose more this round.

          You can’t undo history like that, not unless F1 gives Lewis Nico’s points difference for all the races Lewis has been handicapped. Then you could say the damage has been undone. So that might put Lewis at … 70+ points in the standings ?

    6. @neiana
      Don’t forget the reason he needs the additional PU’s is that his blew up affecting his races and ability to score points. So he suffered then, and now he is taking addional units now he is suffering again by starting dead last.
      In addition, don’t forget the PU’s get updates throughout the season. If everyone took umpteen engines at race 1, they’d not get the updates. So no incentive for that.

    7. The regs are OK, the problem is the 22 car grid.

      The difference between a 15place (two engine components) penalty and a 55 place penalty(3whole engines) is 7 places which when you are at the front normally then one is as bad as the other….

      1. the regs are a bunch of political bandaids with no real thought behind them and appeals to the illusion of cost savings, which F1 has not enjoyed since they moved to the new formula. (Formula Mercedes).

        the regs are far from okay, half of them need to be tossed out, the only fuel restriction that needs to stay in place is the 100kg/hr fuel flow rate going to the engine, that is the only fuel reg that makes sense with respect to F1 and the rest of FIA’s brands/products/marketing vehicles.

    8. I find it incredible how this ‘manipulation’ is suddenly terrible and the worst thing possible yet no one notices that Red Bull and Macca did exactly the same on various occasions last year without a single peep from you lot. Who do you think lobbied for these rule changes?

      But no if Merc uses it it has to be bad for the sport.

      You also fail to recognise that engines or not the championship leader has started three races at a significant disadvantage, like at the back, through absolutely no fault of his own.

      Perhaps you would like to see him banned for a few races?

      Or shall we see some racing and be thankful?

  2. Alex McFarlane
    28th August 2016, 10:35

    I’m a bit confused, can someone clarify why using all these power units this weekend mean he has ‘new’ engines for the remainder of the season?

    1. Alex McFarlane
      28th August 2016, 10:55

      Actually I think I understand now, thinking about it. It’s all a bit silly really.

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