How the mighty have fallen…
After so many years of watching the silver (and black) cars dominate Formula 1, it’s difficult to fully comprehend what we’re now witnessing. Watching Lewis Hamilton – a seven-time champion – struggling to escape Q1 at Imola, asking how far off the pace he is, describing the gap to where he belongs as “crazy”, seems unthinkable when you consider this same team won a record eighth consecutive constructors’ world championship less than five months a What a difference a winter makes… though perhaps the writing was on the wall much sooner. Two significant rules changes, back-to-back, have derailed the mighty Mercedes winning machine. Not since 2009 has Hamilton begun a Formula 1 season this badly. “There are people that watch and say that I’ve never had a bad car,” he says. “And…