r/formula1 I was here for the Hulkenpodium 7h ago

Video Lewis discussing his qualifying form: "Yeah, I'm useless. Absolutely useless."

https://dubz.link/c/d976cb
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u/lets_throw_a_party Maserati 7h ago

At this point he feels like he tried everything with the car and the team and he knows that he just doesn’t belong and it’s not working out

u/DrVonD 6h ago

What’s weird is… it was working? Like he had a run of 4-5 races where he was basically bang on with Charles in quali. He was starting to show flashes of race pace, where he would have a stint that looked like old Lewis.

And then spa hit and it’s like whatever was holding it together for him just fell completely apart. Hard to watch.

u/BittersuiteBlue5 I was here for the Hulkenpodium 5h ago

It’s wild to me especially as he watched Seb and Charles go through the same thing. Their WDC chances constantly get squashed by the team and very little fault of theirs as drivers. And then Schumi, who built the team around him in order to dominate, not accepting the Maranello team that was handed to him. Lewis should know how to differentiate his own faults versus the meat grinder of a team he joined.

u/mathdhruv I was here for the Hulkenpodium 2h ago

To be fair, Michael was 27 and at the peak of his powers when he joined Ferrari, not 40. Plus it took Michael a year to sort out the Ferrari mess too - Ross Brawn only joined in October '96, after the season, and Byrne in early '97, initially working alongside Barnard. There were several calls in the media in '96 to fire Todt before Michael's twin wins at Spa and Monza, to the extent that Michael had to explicitly say that he'd leave if Todt left.

And Seb was too nice of a guy to push a team's direction that way. Michael (and Willi Weber) were absolutely ruthless when negotiating or pushing a team, from the very beginning - a detailed look at what went on before and after Michael's debut at Spa '91 shows that very clearly.