The valuable new insight into Lewis Hamilton’s seat position complaint

Lewis Hamilton admitted to struggling with his seating position at Mercedes last season, and while that has not been a public topic of concern this year, Martin Brundle offered insight as to why “seating position is everything” to a driver.

The seven-time World Champion had felt his seat was too far forwards within the Mercedes cockpit, likening the feeling last March to “sitting on the front wheels”, adding that it is “one of the worst feelings to feel when you’re driving a car.”

Lewis Hamilton seating position complaints explained: ‘Seating position is everything’

Hamilton admitted to having “really struggled” with where he was placed in the cockpit of last year’s Mercedes, which was a continuation of the 2022 W13, which led him to explain that the car felt as though it was “on the nose” conceptually, without as strong a rear end as he would like.

Sky Sports analyst Brundle, whose own Formula 1 career traversed a time where cockpit position changed as the cars evolved, explained why there he agreed with Hamilton’s point on that issue.

When asked about Hamilton’s seating complaints and how his own driving experience relates from having different seating positions over time, Brundle replied in a Reddit ‘ask me anything’ session for Sky Sports F1: “Seating position is everything.

“Most of my era of drivers, if you survived, you limped because you smash your legs up because they used to put the driver right at the front of the car to counterbalance the weight of the engine and gearbox behind you. Not much thought was given to safety. So if you crashed, you were pretty much going to break something – your feet, your ankles or your legs as I certainly did.

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“So, it is important. I mean, I’ve driven, for example, in Senna’s beautiful black and gold Lotus Renault turbo. And it’s wonderful because you can see everything in front of you, but it’s not very safe.

“I recently drove one of Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes and you’re buried inside the car with the halo and the headdress and the hands [HANS, sic] device around your neck. And I didn’t actually feel particularly safe – I felt more trapped.

“But I think the drivers these days get used to that and feel quite safe. So it’s what it’s about – we don’t want to see people killed or badly injured in the name of sport.

“But I do agree with him – especially now. The cars are so long, they’re much longer than I used to race in Formula 1, they’re probably more akin to the cars I raced in Le Mans. But it’s the pedals. It’s the steering wheel. It’s the feedback from the car on how linear everything is that that matters as well.

“So I’ll give you a good example. We used to have a spare car and drivers used to share it – three cars between two drivers in Formula 1. And on a Sunday morning you’d got in the spare car in the warm up and give it a run and then get back in your car. Theoretically, they’re identical and teams would hate you coming in saying that car feels different to my car because it does!

“And even tiny differences when you’re going through a corner at 200 miles an hour, you notice. So everything matters when you’re driving a racing car with those kind of loads going on.”

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