F1 / Sports

Nelson Piquet apologises to Lewis Hamilton over comments but denies racial intent

Nelson Piquet has apologized “wholeheartedly” to Lewis Hamilton but “strongly condemns any suggestion” he racially abused his fellow Formula 1 world champion, claiming his comments have been mis-translated.

An interview with the Brazilian from last year surfaced this week, in which he twice used a racially offensive expression when referring to Hamilton.

It led to widespread condemnation from the whole F1 paddock, with Hamilton himself calling for “action” and insisting that “archaic mindsets need to change and have no place in our sport”.

On Wednesday, Piquet issued his own statement where he said he wanted to “clear up the stories”.

“What I said was ill thought out, and I make no defense for it,” said Piquet, a three-time F1 champion.

“But I will clarify that the term used is one that has widely and historically been used colloquially in Brazilian Portuguese as a synonym for ‘guy’ or ‘person’ and was never intended to offend.

“I would never use the word I have been accused of in some translations. I strongly condemn any suggestion that the word was used by me with the aim of belittling a driver because of his skin color.

“I apologize wholeheartedly to anyone that was affected, including Lewis, who is an incredible driver, but the translation in some media that is now circulating on social media is not correct.

“Discrimination has no place in F1 or society and I am happy to clarify my thoughts in that respect.”…

F1 / Sports

Lewis Hamilton hopes Mercedes will do less experimenting on F1 race weekends

The seven-time world champion labelled his car “undriveable” and a “disaster” following a difficult Friday practice at the Canadian GP in which he and team-mate George Russell ran vastly different set-ups as Mercedes sought more answers for their troublesome W13 car, which has been plagued by porpoising and bouncing all season following F1’s rules revolution.

Hamilton qualified fourth in the Montreal rain on Saturday and then went one better in the race, claiming the 184th podium of his career but just his second of a difficult 2022 – the first coming at the opening race in Bahrain.

Canada was the first weekend Hamilton had finished ahead of Russell since Bahrain, and the 37-year-old hopes Mercedes will be less extreme in their set-up experiments on his car as he feels being the team’s ‘guinea pig’ has been hindering his weekends.

“We’re just trying to work… we’re just trying to progress as a team. Moving forward, I think we’ll be a little bit more cautious on doing too many experiments as it really does hinder you through the weekend, especially if you only have practice one and two in the dry and don’t get a FP3, for example,” he said.

“I think there are lots of learnings from this weekend and improvements that we can make moving forwards.

“I really hope, moving to Silverstone… it’s such an important race for us and for me and so I just want to be in a battle with these guys.”

Hamilton says his result in Canada afforded him belief that the Silver Arrows could claw the gap back to Red Bull and Ferrari on the fast-flowing Silverstone circuit at next weekend’s British Grand Prix.

He said: “I think we’re better in medium and high-speed corners probably, than we are in the low-speed corners but we have bouncing, so I don’t know how it’s going to be through Copse and all those places.”

Are Hamilton and Merc getting any closer to race wins?

Damon Hill, the 1996 world champion and Sky Sports F1 pundit, thinks there …

F1 / Sports

Lewis Hamilton rues ‘a lot of points lost’ after limping to fourth

Hamilton, while some way behind dominant race winner Verstappen, was running a comfortable second at the Red Bull Ring before he was told of floor damage just after the halfway point of the race, confirmed by Mercedes to have been sustained when running over the kerbs at Turn 10. The seven-time world champion then quickly started losing pace to team-mate Valtteri Bottas and star performer Lando Norris, with both drivers then passing him and dropping him out of the podium positions. The end result leaves Hamilton 32 points behind Verstappen in the title standings, rather than the 26 it likely would have been without his issue.

“I already said before the race that it would be very hard to beat Max of course,” said Hamilton. “It’s obviously frustrating to lose so much downforce on the rear of the car and not be able to hold on to second place.

“So a lot of points lost today.”

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff absolved Hamilton of blame for the damage as he wasn’t “running too hard over the kerb, it was just a part that fell away”.

And asked by Sky F1’s Rachel Brookes about the issue, Hamilton replied: “I wasn’t going over the kerbs any more than anyone else, so I have no idea where it happened, but a lot of damage.

“I was in second when all of a sudden it obviously broke. Second place would have been easy.”

Hamilton added to F1 that “there was not anything I could really do” and that the damage was “super unlucky”.

Hamilton: Upgrade won’t be enough to catch Red Bull

The Austrian GP proved to be Verstappen’s third win in a row, while it was another tough race for Hamilton – who before May’s Monaco GP held the title lead and appeared the man to beat.

“I would say these past five races have been so difficult,” admitted Hamilton. “I’ve obviously lost a lot of ground after these past five races so it’s been pretty painful.”

And Hamilton isn’t exactly optimistic of catching …

F1 / Sports

Azerbaijan GP: Lewis Hamilton blows race chance with error after mistakenly hitting ‘magic’ switch

Lewis Hamilton says flicking a “magic” button on his Mercedes car caused him to blow his chance of an Azerbaijan GP victory, with the world champion inadvertently “switching the brakes off” and missing the first corner just as it appeared he had passed Sergio Perez at the restart.

Hamilton looked to have lucked in at Baku after championship and race leader Max Verstappen crashed out, and – second on the grid for the post-red flag restart – he then got the jump on Perez off the line. But, in dramatic scenes on an extraordinary afternoon, Hamilton then locked up into Turn One and ran onto the escape road, dropping him way down the order and out of the points.

On team radio, a devastated Hamilton asked his Mercedes team: “Did I leave the magic on? I could have sworn I turned that off.”

He then told Sky F1 after the race that he mistakenly pressed the ‘magic’ button just when it appeared a victory was within his reach.

“On the restart, I think when Checo [Perez] moved over towards me I clipped a switch and it basically switches the brakes off so I just went straight,” said Hamilton. “I had no idea that I’d even touched it.”

The ‘magic’ switch is essentially designed to heat the front tyres on the car before a race start by changing the brake balance. Hamilton likely turned it off before the start before hitting it again by accident.

“He touched a button and the brake balance changed,” explained Mercedes boss Toto Wolff. “The brake balance went forward and basically the car doesn’t stop.”…