Thursday, 22 Oct, 2026
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Hamilton criticizes Mercedes F1 “behind closed doors”


Hamilton to be critical of Mercedes "behind closed doors"

The world champion experienced a disappointing qualifying on the streets of Monte Carlo when he finished in seventh place on the grid. Team mate Valtteri Bottas secured third place.

And while the biggest problem for Hamilton was that he couldn’t turn his tires on in qualifying, after that he suggested that the team could do a better job.

“There will be some tough discussions that we will have with my engineers tonight or maybe after the weekend,” said Hamilton.

“There are things that should have been done and that weren’t done. But we’ll learn from that and come together in the next race, stronger.”

When asked if he could expand what the team should have done, Hamilton said, “I really can’t, no. It’s a little frustrating from my point of view, but it is what it is.

“I can’t really say much about it, and I don’t want to be critical of the team either, but behind closed doors I will be. And we have to work harder.”

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Hamilton admitted the team hadn’t built on an encouraging day of training on Thursday as line-up changes had sent it in the completely wrong direction when track action resumed on Saturday.

“There were a lot of changes that we made to the car after the third RP because the third RP was a disaster,” he said.

“And that’s from the work we’ve done over the past few days. It was completely the wrong direction, completely missing the ball.

“We then made some changes to try to take steps backwards and move the car to another location and the car was worse than ever. I think we really got lost as of Thursday.”

Since the Mercedes car is known to not turn its tires on as quickly as rivals Ferrari and Red Bull, Hamilton said there was no real point where he was comfortable.

“We’re definitely fighting [with tyre warm up]and I think this is being magnified here because it’s obviously a low energy circuit, “he said.

“There aren’t really any high-speed areas and it was much, much cooler today. So it got worse as the day went on or so.

“I’m not sure how Valtteri can get their tires to run. I’ve seen a hint of grip on this last lap, but it’s really short lived so there will be a lot of analysis.

“Obviously P7 isn’t a great place to start, but I’ll have to do my best to help with damage control tomorrow. I’ll try to see if there’s any way I can move forward.”

The post Hamilton criticizes Mercedes F1 “behind closed doors” first appeared on monter-une-startup.