Hamilton explains the reason Russell was beating him before fightback

F1 great Lewis Hamilton has opened up on the reason why he was losing to team-mate George Russell earlier in the season. After Valtteri Bottas left Mercedes at the end of 2021, the 37-year-old began this year with a new team-mate in the form of the ex-Williams driver.The 24-year-old started the season well, and outscored Hamilton in seven of the first eight races of the campaign. According to the seven-time champion, he was assured he would have a car capable of challenging for the title ahead of this season.But the W13 has been a far cry from the standards they have shown over the last seven years, struggling for pace on the straights and suffering from significant porpoising earlier in the season. Hamilton revealed he spent the opening races trying to figure out how to extract the best performance from his stuttering car, where Russell opted for a slightly different approach.”I’ve tried every setting you can possibly do,” he told the media over the US Grand Prix weekend. “That’s what I was doing at the beginning of the year. The whole idea of performing at your best and getting the best result from each weekend would be nice but I was really about problem-solving.JUST IN: Lewis Hamilton provides seven-word update on Mercedes future ahead of Toto Wolff chat Lewis Hamilton explained why George Russell was outscoring him earlier in the season (Image: GETTY)”I will sacrifice this session or all the sessions to be able to find more data and information for you so that when we go back to the factory they’ve got a better understanding of what’s going on. But it ultimately hindered a lot of the weekends.’ He added: ‘It’s been an unusual year. George is doing a great job. I don’t have any problems with it. There’s no issues in the background with us.”George and his team don’t experiment the same, obviously. But that’s because I’ve been here for a long time. I have the big, deep conversations with people I’ve been with for 10 years. So me and [Andrew Shovlin] can have arguments, constructive arguments. George, it’s his first year with the team so he’s come in and he’s just doing his job to the best of his ability, with very little movement of set-up. I’m doing back and forwards here and there, different wings, all these different things and I like that anyway.’ As Mercedes continue to search for a race win in 2022, Hamilton, who has been a serial winner over the last several years, is in danger of losing his record of winning at least one race in every F1 season he has been a part of throughout his illustrious career. Hamilton has shared an insight into his psyche following what has been a very confusing and underwhelming F1 season. ‘At the beginning, it didn’t feel too difficult,” he shared.DON’T MISSLewis Hamilton ‘turns the tide’ on George Russell to avoid Max Verstappen repeatLewis Hamilton admits ‘I don’t really like driving’ and drives car ‘no one would expect’Lewis Hamilton ‘lost seven pounds’ in weight during US GP fight with Max Verstappen Neither Hamilton or Russell have won an F1 race this season (Image: GETTY)”But definitely it starts to wear down on you because you’re in the hope that you’re going to get back there and then… all of a sudden we start having those races where we get into second and then the next race, the car one weekend is good, then it’s one, two, three, four, not good, then it pops up. So you don’t know. You do all the work in the simulator then the simulator’s telling you something different to what you get at the track.”It’s just a confusing overall year of emotions. You think, the sims are good and the car feels quite good this weekend or the engineers say ‘ok, we’ve got an upgrade that’s worth three tenths’ and you get there and it’s a tenth slower and you know and you’re ‘oh shoot’.’I think I’ve learned just not to get my hopes up on anything. It’s better to kind of under-expect and if it’s just as good it’s just as good and if it’s better, it’s better. In terms of preparation, I think we’re better now.” Hamilton just lost out to Max Verstappen at the US Grand Prix last weekend, but will have another opportunity to record his first win of the season in Mexico this Sunday.