Hamilton left 'flat' again after Melbourne qualifying

The weekend's qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix out in Melbourne is now done and dusted, and although Red Bull's Max Verstappen secured himself his third pole of the 2024 race calendar, McLaren's Lando Norris got his best result of the year so far as he qualified in fourth.

Mercedes appear to have somehow fallen even further back this year though, as George Russell finished in seventh with seven time Formula One world Champion Lewis Hamilton coming in at eleventh. Considering the controversies that happened in the past year, new partnerships with gambling brands for F1 drivers and teams are uncertain. This is a counter-course to casino brands sponsoring football and baseball teams across the world.

After a very poor Saudi Arabia Grand Prix, the team have spent the last two weeks trying to work out why their race car did not perform as they expected, but having noticed significant problems in Jeddah with their lack of speed in the high speed corners, very little changed in Melbourne.

Whilst the official line remains that the car has potential, they are yet to prove it at this point in the calendar, and Hamilton himself was simply at a  loss to explain the lack of pace available to him, as he did not even make it into the top ten.

Hamilton has now been out paced at all three races so far in the year of 2024. and although he was optimistic as he was fourth fastest in the final  practice, it all fell apart again in the qualifiers.

"I don't know if it's the wind picking up - it picked up quite a bit, same as yesterday - and then the car is just so much more on a knife edge. That's it.  It's just a flat feeling, it's not great."

Hamilton did concede that having now qualified ninth, eighth and eleventh, team mate George Russell is clearly getting more out of the car than he is and doing 'a better job', so he was happy to acknowledge the fact that he was 'less consistent' than his colleague, and although it could be worse, it was clearly frustrating him.

There will no doubt be some talk and speculation surrounding whether his  heart is still with Mercedes given everyone in racing knows that his future lies with Ferrari, but it is not like these struggles are new for him, and after two years of struggling with an aerodynamic concept that was different from the rest of the grid, their hopes of making progress this year do not seem to have been well founded albeit despite Russell's slightly better showing.

Their problem that remains for them is that their race team do not understand why the car generates less pace in high speed corners (as referenced by Hamilton), but  the other issue is it is not generating the downforce on the track that the simulations have suggested it should be, and that is further holding them back. It basically boils down to them failing to  understand the airflow under the car and ground effect 'venturi' tunnels that develop the downforce.

It should be solvable, but again it is not new - it has been three years of problems that should be solvable, with high moments and optimism that then quickly disappears, as Hamilton acknowledges.

As things stand, it is Verstappen's to lose.