Lewis Hamilton has moved to quell speculation he could miss this weekend’s Canadian Grand Prix after he experienced severe back pain during yesterday’s race.
The Mercedes driver described the Azerbaijan Grand Prix as “the most painful race I’ve experienced”. His car was porpoising heavily and bottoming out on the track’s long, bumpy straights throughout the 51-lap grand prix.Afterwards, Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said his driver’s pain was not only muscular but “goes properly into the spine and can have some consequences.” He added the team would “have someone on reserve, which we anyway have at every race, to make sure that our cars run” in Canada.
However, in a social media post, on Monday Hamilton said he was feeling better following treatment from his physiotherapist Angela Cullen and intend to race this weekend.
“Yesterday was tough and had some troubles sleeping but have woke up feeling positive today,” he said.
“[My] back is a little sore and bruised but nothing serious thankfully. I’ve had acupuncture and physio with Ang and am on the way to my team to work with them on improving.
“We have to keep fighting. No time like the present to pull together and we will. I’ll be there this weekend, wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
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2022 Azerbaijan Grand Prix
- FIA should black-flag cars if their porpoising endangers drivers’ safety – Horner
- Transcript: Why Norris reluctantly complied with McLaren’s Baku team orders
- Montreal is “going to hurt” in stiff 2022 cars say drivers hoping for bouncing fix
- Leclerc was heading to a ‘comfortable win’ before retirement – Ferrari
- F1 should penalise those who ‘obviously’ slow on purpose in qualifying – Norris
Markus
13th June 2022, 11:30
That is, Hamilton’s absence will not be the basis of a propaganda machine run by the British media at the behest of Toto Wolff. It is now important for the heads of other teams to watch what their drivers say. It must not be the case that Wolff will gain their authority and use them to further the fight to change the regulations.
Mercedes is a team that simply cannot stand the fact that they are losers and their car sucks.
David (@djarvis)
13th June 2022, 11:34
This was Toto Wolff politics at its finest. He’s looking a desperate man lately
André
13th June 2022, 11:52
You guys are delirious. Really. Cynicism through the roof, to suggest that Hamilton and the team are faking the bouncing issue and the back pain to trigger a regulation change. That desperation you’re talking about only exists in your head. From every comment you can read from anybody at Mercedes, they are keeping their heads down trying to understand and fix their car. Both your comments don’t reflect at all anything that comes out of Mercedes in the news.
petebaldwin (@)
13th June 2022, 12:17
I’m personally not suggesting he’s faking the bouncing issue or the back pain that goes with it. I think he’s playing it up though – like when a footballer gets fouled and then does 15 rolls across the pitch screaming as though he’s lost a leg.
After the race, Hamilton said “I’ll do anything to avoid having that again”
And yet he’s about to head out to another bumpy track drive a car 5 days after his last session. Do you think they’ll give him a setup that is less stiff this time? Surely doing “anything” would extend to losing a bit of pace to protect his back and avoid pain? If I was to put money on it, I’d probably go with him having a super-stiff car that is scraping across the ground and bumping all over the place…..
There is clearly a problem that needs to be resolved one way or the other but it is the extremely dramatic comments about “doing anything to avoid another bumpy race”, putting drivers on standby (when they’d already be there anyway) and the car being extremely dangerous to drive (despite no incidents yet being linked to porpoising or bouncing) that don’t seem to match up with the fact that this weekend, they will be choosing to give Hamilton a setup that guarantees another extremely bumpy ride in the pursuit of lap time.
DrG
13th June 2022, 15:35
You ever slipped a disk or worse slipped one and had a bulge burst?
You lose the feeling in your legs, have paralysed feet and frequently start losing bladder control!
You go from operating ok to losing the ability to work, at all, for life!
I have had this along with multiple operations from racing and know that the damage is life changing even if it’s just minor.
Instead of suggesting it’s all silly, exaggerated and football like,
just look at any onboard and try to figure out how you even supposed to see where your going let alone at 200mph?
Then figure out how your spine and neck is supposed to cope?
I get it – everyone wants Hamilton gone in order to forget last year – but through injury? Jeez there are some sick people out there.
Bottom line – until you have been paralysed by disk issues far less than breaking back bones – do not judge!
Hamilton is in his 14 year of racing on his spine and thus will have substantially more wear and tear. Russel no such issues yet who is doing the heavy lifting?
His former team mate and indeed Kimi had to cut seasons short due to back injuries and operations while running in a completely benign series of regulations compared to this utterly ridiculous, vastly expensive oh ‘oh oh look there much closer and more overtakes’ none of which has happened, frankly engineering wet dream!
Time to take a step back and see what this looks like from the outside.
I thought 09 was bad – I thought 92 was bad.
This is on another level for real fans.
David (@djarvis)
13th June 2022, 12:30
@andrè No cynicism here at all. I can see the bouncing for myself and I cant even imagine how much pain Lewis was in after driving around Baku circuit for an hour and a half yesterday.
I could also foresee as soon as Wolf made the comment about reserve drivers that Lewis would confirm he is fine to drive and that Wolf made the comment to the media to try and influence the FIA to take action now. Wolf is a master of politics and PR
Krommenaas (@krommenaas)
13th June 2022, 13:16
I think it’s obvious that this weekend’s complaints and suggestions to change the rules by Mercedes were orchestrated. It’s only cynical if it’s not true. If it is, you’re naive for buying it.
André
13th June 2022, 12:01
Frankly, I don’t quite understand why so much hatred for a team that beat everyone else on pure merit in the past 7 years, with and without regulation changes trying to stop them from winning. Notable ones were the ban on oil burning, the massive aero change from 2017, the front wing change from 2018 or 2019, and the floor plus rear brake duct change for 2021 which took away most of the performance advantage that Mercedes had in 2020, which allowed Redbull and Max to fight for the title, which had a cherry on top when Masi cracked under pressure from the Redbull crew in Abu Dhabi to allow the restart before the backmarkers had returned to the back of the pack, as per procedure. This anti Mercedes narrative is getting old and worn, and doesn’t stand against historical facts.
Krommenaas (@krommenaas)
13th June 2022, 13:18
It’s not anti-Mercedes to think they are playing up the problem hoping to get a rules change. I think these political games are delightful personally. They laid it on a little too thick this weekend, but it was still a good play to make.
Pjotr (@pietkoster)
13th June 2022, 16:51
Yeah, the GOAT get’s his ### kicked not only by Ves but also by his car. I feel sympathy for Hamilton I think it really hurts, but what a show getting out of his wreck. I say great performance for making a movie.
Andre
14th June 2022, 13:04
I wonder what evidence you have, beyond wishful thinking, to say that Lewis faked the back pain, and that this is all a plot by Mercedes to trigger a regulation change. Other drivers complained about bottoming this weekend and in the previous weekends. What happened in Baku is not related to the porpoising per se, but related to the bumpy track and stiff suspension. I wonder how pleased you would be to take up to 3G hits to your spine at over 300kph for an hour and a half. You, armchair, post-drive-to-survive experts, have no clue what you are talking about. Everyone could see what was going on with Hamilton’s Mercedes.
Roman
13th June 2022, 12:45
and here we go. another dumb hate comment.
MacLeod (@macleod)
13th June 2022, 13:29
Their car is still the third fastest so not so bad.
Adrian Hancox (@ahxshades)
13th June 2022, 11:56
Nice to see he got a happy ending :)
Brian White
13th June 2022, 12:02
Odd how only Hamilton had the back problem. Russell doesn’t complain and gets on with the job even though getting paid a lot less
grat
13th June 2022, 20:02
George was complaining, but he, Lewis and Wolff all seem to agree that Hamilton had a different configuration on his car that made the bouncing more severe.
But don’t let facts get in the way of your baseless speculation.
Fred Fedurch
13th June 2022, 22:28
“George was complaining”
As to be expected.
“it’s important that you condition him and you calibrate him in the right way” said Wolff.
The “calibration” seems to have been done to perfection. You can’t see the strings, and nary a hint of Toto’s lips moving when Russell speaks.
Gubstar
13th June 2022, 12:07
Its a medical miracle……
MacLeod (@macleod)
13th June 2022, 13:33
Acupunture to numb his spine and a good physio for his mussels isn’t a miracle and isn’t gone (I should know i have the same) if one of his disks is hurt Canada could be very bad for him.
OmarR
14th June 2022, 3:28
@macleod I knew millionaire people were eccentric, but if Hamilton has a physio for molluscs, that takes the cake!
Ronald
13th June 2022, 12:10
Did anyone except Wolf expect anything different?
Oleg
13th June 2022, 12:46
Recovery to Hamilton.
He is not having luck with confront the young Russell yet.
After all, their confrontation is one of the intrigues of this season.
So it turned out in the last race.
Russell’s whole race was on a clean track and without a fight.
While Hamilton had to fight the whole race to maintain and improve his position.
Hamilton had three overtakes in this race.
MacLeod (@macleod)
13th June 2022, 13:35
George has some problems with his feet (probaly hitting the cockpit during porpoirsing) but he is young still no problem.
Claus J
15th June 2022, 9:39
So? KMAG had twice that many overtakes in half a race in an inferior car and earned a 6 in the driver ratings and didn’t receive a single vote in the dotw which HAM won on pure pity votes… HAM has disappointed me this season, with his driving as well as the theatrics. RUS is a nice talent; but with what he can get out of the merc, HAM surely should do much better than he does. “Shut Up ‘N Play Yer Guitar”, comes to mind…
Sensord4notbeingafanboi (@peartree)
13th June 2022, 13:03
The pain can affect your chakras and stop you from being able to properly channel your card reading.
ruliemaulana (@ruliemaulana)
13th June 2022, 14:01
His aura is still bright, he still the blessest driver on the grid.
Ruben
13th June 2022, 14:30
I wonder though, since he came back on a quite firm statement made earlier, if his spine is broken for real..
Esteban
14th June 2022, 0:48
He had acupuncture, tho…
jff
13th June 2022, 13:37
It would be better to close the comment section for articles like these; the comments are quite disappointing.
Or maybe don’t try to make an article out of every single quote; these updates are better suited from Social Media and/or the round-up IMO.
Raymond Pang
13th June 2022, 14:23
Sorry no, just because you don’t agree with the comments, it doesn’t mean they should be closed. There’s no hate speech or anything else vindictive or offensive. Just a lot of cynicism or pragmatism, whichever way your opinion sways.
Closing comments would stop you expressing your view that the article is not necessary.
And why are these updates better suited to social media? The article refers to one of the hottest debates going on in F1 at the moment, with comments from statistically the most successful driver of all time to set straight the record of whether he will compete next week or not.
jff
14th June 2022, 6:51
I didn’t even get to the point of agreeing or disagreeing, I’m just disappointed about the quality of the comments. Most seem to be having a dig at Hamilton rather than discussing that “statistically the most successful driver of all time (setting) straight the record of whether he will compete next week or not.”
You might identify it as “cynicism or pragmatism”, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t ‘hate speech’.
It often is ‘hate speech’ hidden in cynical comments.
I still recall the old days of this site with fewer, but qualitatively better, articles and insightful comments (some I agreed with, some I didn’t). IMO this site is now pumping up many empty quotes and pumping it out to get as many clicks and comments.
It will do well for the statistics, but not for being a quality site about F1 and motor racing. Again, that’s my PoV and that’s why I share it here.
Emma
13th June 2022, 19:01
I agree.
Gubstar
13th June 2022, 14:43
If George finishes in front of Lewis in Montreal and Silverstone, then Mercedes will have no choice but to make Lewis support George in his title run. Then Lewis will know how Valteri has felt over the last 5 years.
Roman
13th June 2022, 16:20
There most likely is no title run, so no sense in such team strategies. And Merc dont usually go for such wingman tactics. They can just keep trying to improve the car while getting the possible points.
Grapmg
13th June 2022, 17:01
If at some point MB is a competative car and Russel still way ahead that might be a good strategy. But not likeley this year. First step is podium positions and to start winning races again.
Brett Woods (@pertwee)
13th June 2022, 16:59
This car will not give you a championship. Abandon this car. Abandon the season if necessary and count your blessings. One more wrong bounce and you’ll stretch your spinal cord. I’m begging you not to ruin your future.
Mayrton
13th June 2022, 17:42
Of course he won’t. It is all just a lobby for a suspension rule change.
DaveW (@dmw)
13th June 2022, 18:58
Wolff said they would have a reserve, as they always do, but that he had not talked to Hamilton People who don’t do the reading immediately said, oh Wolff is playing for sympathy and a rule change. Now that Hamilton said he’ll race, it’s back again for more keyboard battles. Oh it was just a ruse by the devious Wollf. Also, British Bias! So tiring.
superman
14th June 2022, 0:22
Why isn’t he (and the rest of the grid) taking a stand over Canada’s disgusting human rights ongoing issues? Wrong skin colour?….
OmarR
14th June 2022, 3:30
Touché