With all the media attention focused on Ferrari's recovery, on the Horner Red Bull case, on the announcement of Hamilton's arrival at Maranello and on Verstappen's performances, the disaster that is taking place at Mercedes has gone almost unnoticed. A chaos not only linked to the escape of its symbolic driver: the performance of the silver car has plummeted: now – in addition to Verstappen and Perez – the couples behind the wheel of Ferrari and McLaren are also uncatchable.
Hamilton and Russel are struggling like never before in practice and the poor impression made at the last GP weighs like a boulder: on the 17th lap Hamilton retires, while Russel crashed into the wall (how scary, he remained in the car with the car half overturned) on the last lap while he was seventh. In short, the team that dominated for years is now up to its neck in trouble. But “dominated” perhaps doesn't give a good idea: we are talking about a team that for seven very long years, from 2014 to 2020, won all the makes and drivers' world championships (6 with Hamilton, 1 with Rosberg), with the conquest of 102 GP out of 138, equal to a triumph percentage of 73.9% between races won and played. Those were the years in which Toto Wolf said “We have no competition, we'd better do it alone”, commenting on the ferocious duels between Hamilton and Rosberg who brought home 11 doubles in 2014 and even 12 the following year, a record that is still unbeaten.
Well, these monsters are now in the dust, and we don't know when they will come out of it. With one more complication: the escape of the sponsors. With Hamilton, the Star also loses that extraordinary catalyst of media attention that the seven-time world champion has (2008, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020). And in fact Puma and Puma and Tommy Hilfiger are on the run. They will probably be replaced by Adidas, which is also in trouble with its image because it has just lost – after 70 years – its sponsorship of the German national football team. Now let's see who will replace Hamilton.
#Mercedes #attack #FormulaPassion.it
