Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes admit 'championship hopes are over'

On Friday, after their worst qualifying session in nine years, Toto Wolff admitted Mercedes’ lack of pace relative to their rivals made him want to “strangle” himself. The Mercedes team principal is going to have to dream up ever more gruesome ways of doing himself in because this looks like getting worse before it gets any better.

Both Wolff and Mercedes’ seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton admitted they were “not fighting for the championship” this season after a sprint race at Imola on Saturday in which they were not just also-rans, they were irrelevant. Not once in the 21 laps of the race did Hamilton or team-mate George Russell even feature on the television coverage as they trailed home 14th and 11th respectively.

Hamilton took the chequered flag a full 41.4 seconds behind Red Bull’s Max Verstappen after 21 laps of racing, the Dutchman having dramatically passed Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc on the penultimate lap to secure his win.

It felt like those two were in a completely different race, which in effect they were. With Leclerc claiming seven points for second place, Hamilton now finds himself a massive 50 points behind the Monegasque heading into Sunday's Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, which is only the fourth of the season.

Expectations are being lowered all the time. It would have been inconceivable six weeks ago that both Mercedes cars would finish outside the top 10 of any race. It is a measure of just how quickly the silver star has fallen that this performance did not come as a huge shock to anyone.

Mercedes had high hopes that Hamilton and Russell, starting 13th and 11th respectively, might be able to move forward. But both lost position at the start. Hamilton dropped two places to 15th and Russell one to 12th. They then found their progress slowed by midfield rivals such as Alpine and Haas and Aston Martin.

Mercedes’ car was slightly quicker, but not by enough that they could actually do much passing. Both managed to recover one place over the course of the 21 laps. "It is what it is,” Hamilton said. “We are obviously not fighting for the championship but we are fighting to improve the car."

Wolff agreed it was now over for this year as far as their championship hopes were concerned. “We are four races in, and probably today marks the low of this first four races,” he said. “It’s obvious that we’re not anywhere near the fight at the front. I think we have a direction where we know we can unlock the potential that is in the car, but at the moment we don’t have the key.”

Wolff conceded that at some point the team might need to think about ripping it all up and starting again, down a different design philosophy. The trouble is, they need to work out what is wrong with the car before they know which bits to rip up.

The car is still porpoising, bouncing up and down at high speed, but then so are most of their rivals’ cars. Mercedes, though, are really struggling to get their tyres up to temperature. In the meantime, they can only watch as their rivals pull clear, which they are doing at an alarming rate.

Away from Mercedes, the jury remains out on the sprint race as a concept. Like last year, F1’s latest attempt to jazz up the show - holding qualifying on a Friday and a shortened sprint race on a Saturday - is being deployed at three races this year. Some viewers on Saturday bemoaned the fact that, after the initial jostling for position, the drivers mostly settled into a ‘DRS train’, unable to pass each other and unwilling to risk too much, even with the extra points on offer this year, for fear of losing grid position for Sunday’s grand prix. That feels a little harsh. There was plenty of action in the 21 laps, and the two championship contenders delivered another diverting battle at the front, eventually decided after Leclerc’s tyres dropped off. Verstappen’s engineer came on to tell him the Monegasque was there for the taking, but the Dutchman already knew. “Just leave me to it,” he snapped.

For Mercedes, the best they can hope for on Sunday, by their own admission, is points. “And that is not where we set our expectations so this weekend is a complete write-off,” Wolff said.

The Austrian did deny that he and Hamilton had had a row in their garage on Friday when they were seen in a heated exchange, insisting they had merely “vented” at each other. And the day ended on a battling note, with Hamilton insisting on Saturday night he was committed to seeing out his contract, which expires at the end of next year. “I’ve seen a couple of comments from individuals I grew up respecting,” he said. “Ultimately their comments are silly, and all in the name of getting headlines to keep themselves relevant.

“I’m 100 per cent committed to this team. Just because we’ve hit a rough patch, it is not in my DNA to quit.” Some good news, then. But one suspects there is plenty more pain to come.