Lewis Hamilton struggling with 2022 Mercedes branded ’embarrassing’

Jean Alesi says it’s embarrassing to watch Sir Lewis Hamilton drive the 2022 Mercedes given its issues.



Even with the widespread regulation changes being introduced at the start of the season, Mercedes were still widely expected to remain at the front of the field, where they’d been since the start of the hybrid era in 2014.



That remained the case when the 2022 cars were unveiled, with the Mercedes featuring a radical no-sidepod design and rumoured to be as much as a second faster than every rival’s entry. 



In reality though, the W13 has been considerably slower than the Red Bull and the Ferrari throughout the first half of the season.







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What’s more, it has had serious porpoising issues, which have caused physical problems for Hamilton and George Russell.



Alesi says its embarrassing to see the seven-time World Champion have to drive such a car.



“When they presented the car in Bahrain everybody said ‘oh my God, they have made something very special and they’re going to be untouchable’,” he told Give Me Sport.



“But lap after lap they found out the car was nowhere. And to see Lewis Hamilton driving a car like that was sometimes embarrassing because Lewis is a seven-time world champion.”



The Frenchman has also been impressed with how the 37-year-old has worked to improve his machinery.



“But to see his capacity to still improve the car, that was impressive,” Alesi added.



“In Hungary, it was fantastic to see George on pole position and Lewis fighting towards the front.”



Things have indeed got better for Hamilton and co as the season has gone on with them closing the gap to the frontrunners and pulling away from the midfield battle unfolding behind them.



Such as has been their progress that many believe they’ll be able to regularly fight Red Bull and Ferrari for wins after the summer break, but Alesi isn’t so sure.




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He doesn’t think that they’ll be able to make their car fast enough to claim victories on merit before the end of the year.



“By experience when a car is born with problems, you’re not able to fix it,” he stated.



“You can make a compromise but a compromise in Formula 1 doesn’t work, you know. 



“So I don’t really believe they are able to be a winning team winning Grands Prix before the end of the championship under normal circumstances.”
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