What's Going On With Lewis Hamilton's Set-Up Problems

Here is what is wrong with the merc: The engine wants cold weather, the tires want warm weather. The car is fast in a straight line when the engine is cranked up in the cold, but lacks mechanical grip. When its hot, the car is slow in the straights, but has more mechanical grip. The 2022 car had more downforce from the new floor late in the year than the 2024 car, but the suspension is better in 2024 than 2022. So they sacrificed some downforce for better suspension stability and adjustment, but this sacrificed tire warm up, since the suspension is so gentle on the tires now.

Id love an in depth video all about engineering and set up. No specificsrivers mentioned, no toxicity, just technical talk about set up abd how much they have time to change IN a practice session.

I’ve always thought he wasn’t a good driver in terms of car development. When he’s been successful he’s always had a teammate who was very consistent, and probably was the one who was relied upon to develop the car. Lewis is fast as a driver, but I don’t think he’s the setup guy or development guy.

Its becoming more an excuse than anything else. The way Mercedes and Hamilton talk about setups, sounds like they are the only ones doing it in the entire grid.

The 2014 Ferrari that Alonso drove was an extreme case of over and understeer in one. Crazy how he was still able to maximize the most out of it.

Hamilton has already checked out. This season means nothing to him. He knows whatever Mercedes does, they won’t be able to beat RedBull. Whatever he does, he isn’t challenging for a world championship.

What I find interesting is that 2 years ago in an interview, ex Mercedes engineer Philip Brändle stated about Lewis: “He's really a driver who needs a lot of confidence in the car. He doesn't have the technical background that Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher had. He needs confidence and therefore a really fast car”. My own interpretation of that was that Lewis is seemingly not that great at setting up difficult cars, which would explain his consistent struggles and his inconsistency since the 2022 Mercedes car until now.

With a bad car the only thing you can do is experiment with it until you get a good result.

In the 90s when traction control and active suspension were in and out of the sport we saw a wide range of abilities to adapt to completely differently performing cars - i think we have seen this somewhat with the ground effect regs and we will see a large bifurcation in driver response to such massive changes as 2026 - meaning drivers that are great from one era may or may not transcend to another era. My bias would be drivers that race and drive multiple classes and do competitive SIM racing will have an inherent advantage to adapt - always love your content and really enjoy how you stick to data and analytics in as impartial a way as possible

Hamilton missed the braking point in his qualifying error. Definitely more driver error than anything else. And for the people saying "yeah but he had tail wind". Okay great, so did everyone else and that's also not a setup issue.

Long time watcher here. This is probably my favorite video of all time

This might be the only f1 youtube channel that shows no bias towards anyone, and gives proper analysis on a given situation. Thank you very much my friend. You are God's angel.

I disagree - Lulu doesn't seem to be going in "all or nothing" to get that podium. He seems like he just lost all motivation - said it himself he's not really bothered after P18 in quali. He's just desperate for this season to end and going with a crazy setup once again for no apparent reason (he got P2 in the sprint remember, then completely overhauled the settings) seems like securing a good excuse for when George beats him.

excited to see all the changes coming in miami weekend

Well if it was the car than Russel would be in same or very similar position to Hamilton,but he is not. He is doing way better than Hamilton,and that's something that should worry Ferrari.

Surely they should get George to do the setup stuff as he'll be driving the car next year. i do think that LH made a weird decision chasing changes between a car that worked well in the Sprint, especially as they are not in a position to fight for wins right now.

Merc’s car obviously isn’t great, but when the team can’t make headway because Lewis keeps whining…

"totor, car bad" "Luis, vee made it as you asked"

Thanks for the in depth information on setup of an F1 car.

As Rosberg said, these are excuses at this point by lewis when goerge is performing better than him. As you may know this year car is based on lewis's feedback btw.