“It was entirely my fault,” said Lewis Hamilton after embarrassingly getting knocked out in Qualifying on Saturday. He shouldered the entire blame onto himself, further saying that Mercedes and George Russell did a “great job”. While this seemed like the show of ultimate sportsmanship, Mercedes’ race pace derailed his morale at the Chinese GP. And he voiced his concerns to Toto Wolff & Co mid-race.

The 7-time champion started P18 on the grid. But unlike his 2021 Brazil GP P20 to P1 masterclass, this one panned out horrendously. After starting on the soft tires, Lewis Hamilton struggled massively. “That was the worst tire, man,” he said after his first pit stop. But things only got worse as his W15 got stuck behind Esteban Ocon’s vehicle, and he couldn’t make an overtake.

“I can’t even catch him, mate. This car is so slow,” he exclaimed. And after Valtteri Bottas triggered the Safety Lap, Hamilton then went on a rant. “The car is just sliding around everywhere,” Hamilton said on his team radio. “I don’t know. It just feels like something is broken. It’s probably just this balance. It’s really bad.”

Once again, the Mercedes star blamed his setup changes for his 4th failure to teammate Russell in Qualifying. This reasoning did not go down well with his ex-teammate and now, F1 analyst, Nico Rosberg.

Nico Rosberg slams Lewis Hamilton’s “excuses” at the Chinese GP

Lewis Hamilton, in his last year with Mercedes, feels nearly helpless. George Russell, who outperformed the 7x champ in 2022, is doing it all over again. After the Q1 Qualifying knockout in Shanghai, Hamilton said that he and Russell had gone completely opposite ways with the setup. As a result of this “experiment”, he failed. But Nico Rosberg questioned the authenticity of such comments from his ex-teammate.

“Lewis is 1-4 behind Russell in qualifying this year, and every time he says it’s the setup,” the German pointed out after Qualifying. “To me, that’s an excuse. Clearly, he made a mistake – one that shouldn’t happen to a seven-time time world champion.” Russell unintentionally even verified Rosberg’s claim in an interview by saying that “both (Mercedes drivers) went in the same direction” with the setup.

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Such contradictory statements are bringing out the lack of unison within Mercedes. Though this year and 2025 are just considered a ‘write off’ for the Silver Arrows, Toto Wolff needs to bring order back before the 2026 new regulations change the pecking order.