Davidson understands Hamilton: 'Red Bull and Verstappen run away with it'
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Lewis Hamilton was visibly frustrated after the Japanese Grand Prix. Mercedes, the team of Hamilton and others, lacked a lot of speed in the Japanese GP weekend and the Briton ended up no further than P7 in qualifying and P5 in the race. F1 commentator Anthony Davidson can understand where that frustration comes from.
Hamilton can't fight Verstappen again
In 2021, Hamilton and Max Verstappen sensationally battled for the F1 title. Since then, Verstappen has remained at the top with Red Bull Racing, while the Briton has languished somewhat with Mercedes. After the race in Japan, that frustration clearly surfaced for a while, Davidson observed. "I think you hear a level of frustration. He's just seen Max Verstappen and Red Bull just run away with it and destroy the competition. Straight after the race you're a bit devastated by that," said the F1 commentator in Sky Sports' podcast.
'Red Bull has same advantage as Mercedes'
Mercedes was the dominant team in Formula 1 between 2014 and 2020, but since 2022 Red Bull has assumed that role. According to Davidson, Red Bull now has the advantage Mercedes had during that period. "I think he [Hamilton] is aware, the team are aware and everybody else is aware that Red Bull have the advantage at the moment in a similar way to Mercedes having the advantage before this current set of regulations," the Briton continued.
"When you've got that advantage and your winning championship after championship, whether or not you've got penalties for cost caps or whatever, it's given you such a backlog of time to carry on developing next year's car. You just constantly sit ahead of the competition. They're scrambling to try to make headway to catch that gap and you've got that margin to work on next year's car."