Here’s the full explanation: All year, HAM has done a phenomenal job with the early turn in and his tight lines. With these cars, and these tyres, it’s the way forward. On traction, the cars have far less power at lower speeds out of corners, that minimising distance seems to pay off. This weekend in COTA, it was a recipe for that to continue but for some reason HAM is doing the complete opposite of what he did on tracks like China and Hungary - as well as his peak years at Mercedes. Images show - his lap in Q3 today at Turn 8 and Turn 15 vs his mighty pole lap from 2018. Shows exactly what I noticed from lap 1 this weekend. He’s driving half a car width wider than he usually should, and it’s killing the fronts through the lap. Requires a lot more steering lock to get it to the apex, and by the last corner the fronts are screaming for dear life and he’s struggled there a lot. China, conversely, he was phenomenal at protecting the left front at turn 1 so it’s a surprise to see the inverse happening now. Leclerc is following the lines HAM took in 2018 to a greater degree, especially through turn 15 and he seeks more comfortable in hooking up the last sector (I believe he had the outright purple S3 from his Q3 first run). Images below

This is F1 Fan Voice👇 This is what Stefano uses to gather fan opinions - so please create an account and review bomb the hell out of current F1. I defended these regs for a long time and still hope they’ll improve, but this was my final straw. f1fanvoice.com/auth/sign_in.…

Good luck with A-level results everyone. If all else fails, you can always become a data account on F1 Twitter

No amount of DTS revisionism will change how good Hamilton’s 2012 was. I’m happy to put Alonso as the best driver of that season, I’m not fussed given how brilliant he was - but these threads I made many years ago alone - as well as the comments and consensus in them - show McLaren had the fastest driver, not the fastest car. reddit.com/r/formula1/commen… reddit.com/r/formula1/commen…

There’s only 1 Englishman I can ever count on in sport. And that’s how it will remain

I massively agree with this sentiment. Hamilton is a battery merchant and without energy harvesting and clipping, he’d be a useless driver. Let’s go back to naturally aspirated V8’s and he’ll be nowhere…

Right - here is the awaited thread on Hamilton’s brakes. It’s a long story, so be patient 🧵: I’ll start by saying, in F1 there are a few major components that make up braking systems. These are the discs, the callipers, the master cylinder as well as the pedal setup (stiffness, modulation). Every F1 driver has a unique preferred setup regarding these components - and Hamilton’s was to use Brembo callipers (supplied to all teams) mixed with discs and the master cylinder from Carbone Industrie. He used these at McLaren, and when he moved to Mercedes in 2013 he initially adopted a full Brembo system which he initially struggled with. Why? This is where it gets interesting, and what you see in 2026 is quite similar. CI discs are much larger and more powerful than Brembo discs. A lot more powerful, so much so that for 6 months Brembo were unable to replicate this on Hamilton’s 2013 Mercedes - that he made the switch to CI and the rest was history

I wanted to talk more about driving physics/the techy side of F1 this year so here it continues: Ultimately, you cannot point towards an entire regulation set to explain the struggles of a driver - because the evidence suggests quite the opposite. Hamilton’s struggles across the last 2 years - from my perspective - came from a blatant refusal to adapt to a specific, counter intuitive driving quirk that came with the development of the GE era of car. When it came to adapting to the GE era itself, the speed came rather effortlessly at times, and had the same elite pace across 2022 and 2023. As these cars developed, he did not accept that his driving had to change with it, particularly at higher speed ranges. If you listened to his radio over any weekend in 2024 or 2025, whether it’s Bono or Adami - he is constantly being told to stop trailing the brakes in high speed corners. Which is not natural. There was such a mismatch between the mech balance and aero balance that keeping the weight on the nose during a corner robbed the cars off it’s downforce potential, as that was optimised when the car’s pitch was at it’s lowest. In slower, technical corners where aero load was at its smallest, this trait vanished entirely. Long braking zones, combined entries, longer radius corners, tight hairpins there was no evidence he was struggling with “GE” cars whatsoever. And I’m shocked no pundit has bothered to research it enough given how much they talk about it.

The Mercedes, Ferrari and Cadilllac so far have all gone for the McLaren-2025 style front suspension layout in terms of (rear) upper leg placement. Whilst every suspension is inherently designed to stop the car sinking into the ground under braking (“anti-dive”), teams can vary how much they want to control that effect. Something that I could tell for a while is that these cars are very pitch-sensitive, in the sense that we will have large shifts in the aero centre of pressure under braking. This means that - without any suspension at all, these 2026 cars are pretty much capable of doing a front-flip from the braking pitching moment. It comes from a combination of the new Aero regulations combined with the increased braking torque (350kW). The lack of Venturi effect from the floor means we’re seeing the return of raked cars (to power the diffuser), which allows teams to use softer springs and have more freedom with roll bar choices, axle stiffness. In turn, softer springs mean less resistance towards the pitching moments under braking - so to counteract this having similar anti-dive levels to 2022-2025 is a compromise worth having.

As promised - the first of some numbers outlining Hamilton’s qualifying decline over the course of the “Ground Effect” era: What this graphic shows is the “live” or “moving” median in qualifying between HAM and RUS over their time as teammates. Key details to note are: - Hamilton’s last sustained peak over Russell occurred at the 2023 Brazilian GP, where at that point he had been -0.105% faster than Russell over their time together. - From then until their final race together, Russell emerged 0.225% faster, ultimately ending their time as teammates as 0.070% faster. - Hamilton’s decline from Vegas 2023 onwards is especially visible through the steepness of the graph, and the continued (upward) trend towards Russell. - It also showcases an impressive 2023 season, often extending his existing gap to Russell on various occasions. He ended 2023 just over 0.06% quicker.

F1 Qualifying Data Website (Link Below): The first version of my website with teammate qualifying data is here. It only has data for McLaren since 2010 for now, but hope you enjoy it. More teams will be added soon. It includes 2-lap method (explained at the bottom), a H2H and all the data listed below it. You can select each pairing in the drop down menu. f1qualifyingdata.com

Hamilton’s career before he joined Mercedes is already top 10 in history. The craziest part is, it can easily be proven.

It seems like nobody remembers the actual qualifying format in 2007 and how refuelling worked. Everyone seems to think the lap of the first pitstop was the fuel load they qualified on in Q3. This was only the case in 2008 and 2009. In 2007 and 2006, there was a “fuel burning phase” during Q3 and drivers would burn different amounts of fuel to ensure they ended Q3 as light as possible. They would then be “credited” any laps within 110% to be added back to the fuel load they qualified on - giving us their race starting fuel load. So, they started Q3 on their first pit lap fuel load and burnt off x laps of fuel to set their qualifying times. Whereas in 2008 and 2009, they finished Q3 on their first pit lap fuel load. So Hamilton could be telling the truth - and he could not be. Only the team will know if it’s true or not. When Hamilton states he qualified with more fuel - it’s a reference to his fuel burning run plan, not his first pit lap. This information is not available to the public - so there is no way we can tell.

Hamilton vs Leclerc: driving style on turn-in: Thought I’d come back to this to try and visualise what it looks like in real time. This applies to slower, tighter hairpin turns only so bear that in mind - I will try and get on to other corner types later. Here I mentioned the biggest difference between Hamilton and Leclerc is their approach to turn-in and general corner geometry. Hamilton’s “apex” is distinctly earlier than most drivers - including Leclerc - and we can see that in these examples below. Take turn 1 at Bahrain as the first example. - top images is their initial turn in - middle is the clipping point (most important) - final image is exit. Pay no attention to who is ahead (as the movement of each car is at different points in time) but to the available space on the right hand side in the top 2 images. On the bottom images, pay attention to the space to the left on exit. Here we can visibly see Hamilton’s much earlier turn in and focus on entry speed where’s Leclerc focuses on his car placement on exit. See other examples below. Will be interesting to see which approach works best when they’re teammates.

Great insight from Leclerc here - thought I’d try and explain the concept of driving styles in a short thread here 🧵: From my own experience, when drivers - or engineers - talk about their driving style it more often than not refers to their approach under braking and into “slow” speed corners. I’ll go over the most important parts or braking to try and explain what they’d typically be looking for in the data. Namely: 1. Initial application 2. “Aero” bleed off 3. “Mechanical” bleed off Let’s get into it