Where are the honeymoons, the overwhelming championship performances? Although it's only the beginning of 2024, Lewis Hamilton has already "checked out" of Mercedes in his soul, and Toto Wolff has probably sensed this too.
So much so that after the Chinese Grand Prix he even noted that Hamilton is deeply involved in the current situation. This would have been unthinkable even just a year ago! The sports presenter did not hold back on the German Sky Sport broadcast:
"We're simply fed up with this, it's not good enough, it's not professional enough. We had a little highlight this weekend, with second place in the sprint race, but other than that, our goal is not to finish sixth or ninth. We can come up with new reasons here and find excuses for this, but we all know why it's like this. Our car is clearly bad, and this is also due to the fact that Lewis led us towards a development direction that was an absolute dead end. We went terribly wrong last year, the year before, this year, at the Chinese Grand Prix, to the point where the car almost didn't even turn... That's very, very little!"
We are a little disappointed, it is difficult for us now, but we have to accept that this is the reality. We want to do better, that is always the goal, but when you cannot meet your own expectations many times, it can be terribly demoralizing. After such successes, it is not easy to accept this particularly poor and unsuccessful period, which has been going on for three years. And it is a painful lesson that everything is given to succeed, but we are still not able to jump it physically. We don't really understand why..." - said Toto Wolff.
