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Poor relationship between Hamilton and engineer? (36 posts)

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sato113 said 1 year, 11 months ago:

It seems to me that Hamilton needs a new race engineer, he needs someone he get’s along with and who has a bit of a character. His current engineer sound as dull as rain sometimes. many radio snippets from Hamilton’s car are of complaining and more general disagreements. compare their relationship to Vettel/Rocky and Alonso/Andrea Stella and you’ll see the difference.
am i right?

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Icthyes said 1 year, 11 months ago:

Didn’t they promote his original engineer to be the head engineer that oversees both sides of the garage? I believe it might have been a reaction to accusations they might favour Lewis over Jenson. Or it might have been some other bloke.

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TommyB said 1 year, 11 months ago:

Everyone has a moan every now and then on the radio. In fact I imagine a lot of drivers do but they don’t seem to play them. At the moment it only seems to be Hamilton you ever hear on the team radio parts.

Remember Alonso’s “I don’t want to know” and Vettel’s “Are you kidding me or what”.

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LL Jehto said 1 year, 11 months ago:

Maybe it’s Hamilton’s race engineer that needs a new driver?
I don’t know his race engineer, I guess he’s not as starish as Rob Smedley, but I’m willing to bet that there’s nothing wrong with him (the reasoning is that McLaren doesn’t seem the kind of team that was going to hire an incompetent person for the job). My point is that Lewis has gave us time and time again reasons to believe he’s childish and petulant (e.g. Monaco post-race comments). My impression (and I’m usually good on these evaluations) is that that’s his character, so it won’t matter much whom he’s talking to, he’ll always be petulant on adversity.

One has to remember also that we only listen to some of the messages (meaning what we’ve been hearing might give us a wrong idea of their dialog. let’s assume it doesn’t). And given Lewis is a hell of a good driver maybe McLaren has got everything under control and those deadpan responses are the ideal way of dealing with it..

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George said 1 year, 11 months ago:

You might be right for once LL. Normally I’d say get someone with a bit of personality like Smedley to try and lighten the mood, but I cant see that happening with Hamilton, if things dont go his way he’s going to throw his toys out of the pram no matter who’s pushing him.

@Tommy: it’s not just moaning, he doesn’t seem to do what they say half of the time

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LL Jehto said 1 year, 11 months ago:

for once? Oh boy, you have no idea how hard I’ve been trying people to disagree with me and nobody ever says anything, and now you are gonna tell me it’s the first time you think I’m right?

What do I have to do?

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DavidS said 1 year, 11 months ago:

Don’t worry, I’ll disagree with you LL.

I think the engineer/driver relationship is extremely complex. The engineer is there to help the driver during the race and act as a conduit for messages from the team in general. They are not there to be best buddies with the driver, however, the engineer can adopt the best buddy approach if that suits the driver. In the case of Felipe Massa/Rob Smedley, Massa appears to respond well to the relationship between them being more of a friendship. Whereas Lewis’ relationship with his engineer may be more like that of an authority figure, telling him the way things are and what he should do.

I think drivers like Schumacher and Alonso are so good at tactics that their engineer is for the most part an information source.

If an engineer and driver don’t get along, the team will move the engineer on rather promptly.

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Todfod said 1 year, 11 months ago:

I think when you’re driving an F1 car flat out, there is a truck load of adrenaline flowing through your system. I guess its hard to keep your cool all the time. We’ve seen Vettel get a little edgy with Rocky on the radio at times, and so have other drivers with their engineers from time to time. In Lewis’ case it just seems to happen more often than others, but I seriously doubt that there is anythng seriously wrong in his relationship with his engineer. Lewis is just an impulsive character, and in the moment he can be hard to handle.

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LL Jehto said 1 year, 11 months ago:

Thank you DavidS. Although I don’t quite see where you are in disagreement with us.

And of course I was only joking up there.

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Asanator said 1 year, 11 months ago:

“but I seriously doubt that there is anythng seriously wrong in his relationship with his engineer”

When his engineer (the team) tells him to stop taking to much life out of his tyres and he refuses and then later in the stint when the team ask him to pick up the pace and he can’t (because he’s taken to much tyre early on), I’d say there is a problem!

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LL Jehto said 1 year, 11 months ago:

the point we’re trying to make is that there’s nothing seriously wrong in the relationship between Hamilton and his engineer. What is seriously wrong is Hamilton’s personality.

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kearnsie said 1 year, 11 months ago:

Is it just me or that we have only seen this attitude appear in Hamilton since he split with his Dad as manager?

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LL Jehto said 1 year, 11 months ago:

Oh boy, nooo. I’m pretty sure his dad, being such a close family, has got everything to do to how Hamilton’s personality is.

No, its just a coincidence, maybe. If you pay atention, you’ll see that his petulance arises more when he has problems (either with his car that isn’t faster or with his driving style that produces carnage). In 07, 08 we only had arrogance and bad taste coming from his mouth.

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LL Jehto said 1 year, 11 months ago:

I was gonna write “filthy mouth” up there.. LL, don’t get carried away, please!

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sato113 said 1 year, 11 months ago:

unlike some other race engineers, I can’t imagine Hamilton’s ever saying ‘come on, you can do this! focus, focus. we all believe in you’.

instead he gets ‘lewis your driving too fast/slow’
‘we think it’s the best decision’ etc.

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