‘Tough on the spirit’: How Hamilton’s worst-ever start to a season keeps getting worse

When Lewis Hamilton’s lacklustre Mercedes ground to a halt with a power unit failure just 15 laps into the Australia n Grand Prix, an intrusive thought must have entered his mind.

“And then you get maybe second or third, but that’s not the case, and it cascades a bit further down and you just go through the motions.” His best finish so far this season is seventh, comfortably the worst season-opening result he’s ever had. The 2009 season — Hamilton’s first as a defending champion — opened in the worst possible fashion, with the Briton disqualified from the Australian Grand Prix for misleading the stewards.

Consider too that nine of Hamilton’s 18 seasons have started without a win in the first five races and that 2024 is still his worst ever and you begin to get a sense of just how bad this year has been on a career-long scale. Ostensibly its troubled first car was down to McLaren’s same 2009 complaint — that it had been locked in a tense title battle with Max Verstappen and Red Bull Racing a year earlier.

Mercedes took over the title-winning Brawn team at the end of 2009 and found a constructor on its knees. On qualifying pace and on estimates of race pace Aston Martin is the quicker car, and the green team — a Mercedes engine customer — would likely be ahead if Stroll were scoring at the same rate as Fernando Alonso.Instead of being the worst of this three-year regulatory era, this might be better described as Mercedes’s true level.

Eastern Europe Drivers Championship Table Fairytale Titles Pressure Taps North America Melbourne Scoring System Real World Western Asia Ongoing Underperformance Eastern Asia Austrian Channel Nick Fry Suzuka Dominant Constructor Downforce Figure Engine Customer Hungary Europe Victoria Japan Points Standings Race Pace Fernando Alonso Wind Tunnel Estimated Race Pace Florida Bahrain Grand Prix Car Northern America Seven-Time Champion Rebuild Phase Worst-Ever Start Southern Europe Fraught Battle Cost-Cap Era Worst Start Would-Be Rivals Sky Sports Driver Market Peter Fox Performances Dating Rebuilding Phase Worst Season-Opening Result Correlation Problem United States Of America Wolff Scoring Finishes Ground-Effects Regulations Problems Run Development Curve Relative Game Agence France Presse Oceania Max Verstappen Rule Changes Black-And-Silver Lemon Closest Challenger Way China America Poisonous Characteristics Thread Connecting Save Face Power Unit Failure Getty Images Inc. Carlos Sainz Lap Time Performance Levels Australia And New Zealand Shanghai Points Tally Spain Miami Fundamental Lack Worst-Ever Seasons Ground Effect Aerodynamics Asia PIT TALK Worst-Ever Camapign Five-Race Run Australia

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