F1: Hamilton wants car low to the ground, then whines about back pain
Lewis Hamilton is getting destroyed by his more talented teammate, George Russell, this year and now is using back pain as one of his excuses.
Hamilton admits he is struggling with back pain and is not sure if he will be fit for Montreal after he was seen getting out of his car slowly after another miserable race in Azerbaijan.
His teammate beat him by 25-seconds and looked just fine after the race.
In order to make up for his lack of talent vs, Russell, Hamilton has to run his car very low to the track surface to maximize underbody tunnel downforce.
Contributing to the porpoising of his car, and his back pain is the fact the car keeps bottoming out and every time it slaps the track surface it sends a shock wave up Hamilton’s spine.
“There were a lot of moments when I didn’t know whether I was going to make it and if I was going to be able to keep the car on track,’ said Hamilton after the race.
“That was the most painful and toughest race I have experienced.
“Definitely some recovering and hard work with the team to do before Montreal to overcome this hurdle. Feeling better already, though, and motivated me to keep pushing. See you next week.”
He added an update on Monday morning, however, stating in his Instagram story: ‘
“Yesterday was tough and had some troubles sleeping, but have woke up feeling positive today!
“Back is a little sore and bruised but nothing serious, thankfully.
“I’ve had acupuncture and physio with ang and am on the way to my team to work with them on improving.
“We have to keep fighting. No time like the present to pull together, and we will. I’ll be there this weekend, wouldn’t miss it for the world.’
“I was just holding and biting down on my teeth due to the pain. The adrenaline helped, but I cannot express the pain that you experience, particularly on the straight here. I was just praying for it to end.’
“Yeah, because the thing was bouncing so much sometimes,” he said. “There were so many times I was nearly going into the wall. So that was a concern, safety-wise at 180 miles an hour, smashing into the wall, I don’t think I’ve really ever had to think about that too much as a racing driver.
“You don’t really ever think about keeping it out of the wall at that high speed. A very, very, very strange experience.”
“He is really bad,’ said his team boss Toto Wolff after the race. ‘You can see this is not muscular anymore. It goes properly into the spine and it can have some consequences.
“The solution could be to have someone on reserve, which we anyway have at every race.’
Easy Solution
There is a quick and easy fix. If Mercedes raises the ride height for Hamilton, the porpoising and bouncing will stop. Hamilton might finish 60 seconds behind his teammate instead of only 25, but he will not be in pain anymore.