Lewis Hamilton picks painful moment as biggest 2022 F1 memory | F1 | Sports

Lewis Hamilton has claimed suffering back pain at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix was his biggest memory from the 2022 F1 season. The seven-time champion selected an image of him grasping his lower back after the race as one of his only memories from a difficult campaign.

Hamilton struggled to get out of his car after the checked flag in Baku because of Mercedes’ extreme porpoising. Moments after undoing his seat belts, Hamilton was seen grabbing his back before sitting down on his cockpit in visible pain.

Hamilton made the admission in a season review video for Mercedes’ YouTube channel where he and George Russell selected the best moments of the season. Reflecting on the incident, he said: “I don’t actually remember a lot of these photos. This one I remember. This one is the one I remember the most just because of the pain I was in.

“That weekend I went lower than (Russell) on the rear ride height. It was much worse on my car but painful for both of us.”

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Russell backed up Hamilton, stressing he was also suffering from similar issues early on in 2022. He added: “The car was so difficult to drive, especially at the start of the year with the bouncing. It wasn’t where we wanted it to be.”

After the race, Hamilton admitted he was biting down on his teeth in agony and stressed he was “praying” for the race to finish. Mercedes had struggled with porpoising at other races in 2022 but the issue worsened for the team in Azerbaijan.

Hamilton explained: “I was just holding and biting down on my teeth due to the pain, and the adrenaline [helped], I cannot express the pain that you experience, particularly on the straight here. At the end you are just praying for it to end.”

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The Briton later claimed he would have failed to meet the FIA’s 10-second extraction test due to the extreme pain. Mercedes boss Toto Wolff had raised fears that Hamilton could be out of action in Canada due to the scale of his injury.

Hamilton did compete in the next race weekend but his pain was used to push for major changes to the regulations. The FIA ​​relented a week later, introducing a minimum ride height for all cars from the Belgian Grand Prix.

However, Red Bull boss Christian Horner hinted that Hamilton was putting it on to force rules changes. When asked what he would do if he was in Mercedes’ shoes, Horner replied: “Tell them to b**** as much as they could over the radio and make as big an issue out of it as they possibly could.”