Guenther Steiner’s ‘nobody wants it’ reply to Hamilton Mercedes IP question

Slating his W15 at the Brazilian Grand Prix as the “worst” the car has ever been, Guenther Steiner reckons Lewis Hamilton “doesn’t like” the Mercedes and no longer feels the need to hold back.

Hamilton scored a single point at the Interlagos circuit, his fourth last race with Mercedes, as he struggled with bouncing and a lack of pace in both the dry and wet.

Guenther Steiner weighs in on Lewis Hamilton’s W15 complaints

Making his way back to the pits after qualifying on Sunday morning having been eliminated in Q1, he uttered “damn car” before telling the media: “The car I have right now, it’s the worst I’ve ever driven.”

He recovered to score a single point in the 71-lap race but even then had nothing nice to say about his Mercedes.

“That was a disaster weekend, guys,” he radioed to Mercedes after taking the chequered flag in 10th place. “That’s the worst the car’s ever been.”

Again he didn’t hold back with the media: “It’s like a plank of wood. There’s no suspension. It’s just bouncing on the tyres, everywhere. Can’t get on the power anywhere. The worst ride definitely that we’ve ever had.”

Leaving Brazil with one point when George Russell scored 15, former F1 team boss Steiner was asked for his thoughts on what’s going on at Mercedes.

“The car is what it is. It’s not the best car, it’s the fourth best car at the moment on a good day,” he told the Red Flag podcast. “I think Lewis knowing that he’s leaving anyway, it’s easier to complain.

“George has got all the interest to do to whatever is there to show that he’s the leader of the team for the future. He has to prove that, because he knows that because he knows that when his Mercedes contract is up, his seat is not 100 per cent safe so he just tries to do his best, puts everything into it.

“And on the other side, Lewis doesn’t like the car and how it drives, knows that now in three races he’s not there anymore.”

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Guenther Steiner cracks ‘nobody wants it’ Mercedes IP joke

With three races remaining before he heads over to Ferrari, it has been suggested that Hamilton is no longer attending the Mercedes’ meetings.

Asked for his thoughts on that and whether the team was worried there’s ‘valuable IP that he’s gonna steal’, Steiner laughed: “Nobody wants it! Maybe they want it to know what not to do. It’s like ‘get me the IP so I know what not to do’.”

But he wasn’t just taking the mickey out of Mercedes.

Asked if he was ever worried that a driver leaving Haas would take the IP, the former team boss replied: “Never. Who wants it? I was actually hoping that someone could be stealing it. Just have it at, please do it.”

On a serious note, even if Hamilton was being excluded from Mercedes’ meetings, Steiner does not believe it would affect the seven-time World Champion.

“Lewis has so much experience he doesn’t need to be in these meetings,” he said. “His engineer is in there anyway, because you need to set the car up and obviously has to give the feedback what he wants on the car.

“I mean, the car, it is what it is. I think Lewis is just at that point he doesn’t like the car, he complains about that, he sees the glass half empty while George sees his half full. They’ve got a few more races to go.”

Asked what he thinks could be the issue that’s blighted Mercedes’ season Steiner said the team doesn’t understand the ground-effect aerodynamic cars.

“They won three races this year,” he said. “Then they said, ‘Oh, we understood now what we need’. And then the race later, they didn’t. That means they didn’t understand that.

“Toto said a few times this year: ‘We now understand what we need to do’ and stuff like this. But they didn’t.”

Pressed on where he believes the problem lies, Steiner replied: “If I would know, Toto would love me for it. If they don’t understand that, how can I understand that?

“I think these ground-effect cars are so difficult to understand, between the correlation between wind tunnel and the race track that is the biggest thing. You find something in the wind tunnel and you know how to put it on the car, but you put it on the car and it doesn’t do what it wants to do, what you think it should be doing. It has a lot to do with which ride height you’re running.

“When we talk about it, it seems to be too simple. If they could figure it out here… I mean they could figure it out but I think that is what McLaren understood because when they brought an update to the car it normally works, they know exactly what they need to look for in the wind tunnel.

Mercedes are a distant P4 in the Constructors’ Championship with 382 points, 211 behind McLaren.

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