15 March 2023 , 11:26
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F1 pundit Martin Brundle has suggested Lewis Hamilton may take a page out of fellow icon Michael Schumacher's playbook amid his Mercedes woes.
The seven-time world champion endured a tough 2022 campaign with the Silver Arrows and this season has not started as he would have liked. A fifth-place finish at the Bahrain GP - 51 seconds behind race winner Max Verstappen and Fernando Alonso in his Aston Martin - left a sour taste in the mouth of the 38-year-old.
Given his team’s unsatisfactory start to the year and a title challenge in the near future looking unlikely, Brundle mused on the possibility of Hamilton copying a move Schumacher made during his illustrious career. The legendary German famously left Benetton for Ferrari in 1996 and played a pivotal role in building the Prancing Horses’ successful formula which enabled them to dominate F1 in the 2000s, which included six world titles for the driving legend.
And Brundle has offered his thoughts, suggesting that while there are numerous reasons to stay with Mercedes, there may be a part of Hamilton that wants to ‘do a Schumacher’, "There are a lot of good reasons to stay at Mercedes," Brundle told the Sky Sports F1 Podcast. "He just needs them to tell him how they're going to sort this out.
"But you know, Senna left McLaren to go to Williams, Schumacher went off to Ferrari and it took a long, long time, but he made that work. So these great drivers are not scared of going somewhere and then galvanising and getting a lot of new people around them and making something happen.
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"I think there must be part of Lewis that thinks. I'd love to go to Ferrari and do a Michael Schumacher if I can't win my eighth or ninth right now. Why don't I go and have some fun there? I'm sure these are all playing in his mind and he will be talking to his dad and his management team about where do we go from here and that will be exacerbated by the dismal performance in Bahrain".
Mercedes' struggles continued at the opening race of the 2023 season in Bahrain (Formula 1 via Getty Images)Hamilton has been quite vocal regarding Mercedes’ shortcomings both during pre-season and over the first race weekend of the new campaign. Having said that, he delivered an encouraging message to the team on the radio after crossing the line in Bahrain.
As we draw nearer to the next race of the season in Saudi Arabia this Sunday, while appearing on the F1 Nation podcast, 1996 world champion Damon Hill believes that Hamilton’s public criticism of Mercedes was in stark contrast of the support he delivered at the end of the race in Bahrain.
He said: “After the race he got on the radio and said ‘we’ve got work to do guys, I’m right behind you, 100 per cent supportive’. And then there was this line that [he] came out to say, ‘I did warn them, I told them that I didn’t like the car’.
“You can’t criticise and also be 100 percent supportive. It’s obviously constructive criticism, but he’s disappointed. He knows what’s ahead.”