Lewis Hamilton says Max Verstappen needs to act like a world champion to help deal with Red Bull’s drop in form ahead of this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix.
Verstappen finished fifth in the Hungarian Grand Prix and voiced his anger at his car’s handling and Red Bull’s strategy over team radio with a series of expletive-peppered messages. Hamilton, who has lived through the experience of seeing Mercedes lose competitiveness in 2022 and not challenging for a championship since, was asked how Verstappen can cope with Red Bull losing its dominance.
[lawrence-auto-related count=3 category=1388]
“You have to be as a team leader, as a team member,” Hamilton said. “Maybe not such a team leader, but more so [you’ve got to be] a teammate with lots of people and you have to act like a world champion.”
Pushed on what acting like a world champion means, Hamilton laughed and added: “Not like it was last weekend!”
Hamilton said he hasn’t spoken to Verstappen about their collision in Budapest. The pair were captured on camera post-race, and at the time the Dutchman said they would speak later.
“We didn’t talk afterwards,” Hamilton said. “I mean, we went to the stewards. That’s it. We’ve not had a talk. I don’t know if we will. Maybe we’ll talk on the parade this weekend. I’ve not felt that there’s necessarily a need to.”
Verstappen’s frustrations with Red Bull have been voiced after a run of three races without a win coupled with a consistent challenge from McLaren. Hamilton believes the 76-point deficit Lando Norris has in the championship isn’t insurmountable.
“It’s been a minute since I was fighting for the championship, but I think there was a time when I was here [in Belgium] where I was 40 or something points behind,” he said. “Seventy is a big number when you’re against a car that has probably a very, very close to 100% [finishing] record. I think it may have dropped down slightly in one of the races when Max didn’t [finish] – in Australia. But otherwise, they’re a very, very highly performant team.
“It is not impossible, but it is a very, very high, huge challenge and task. Absolutely not impossible. They’ve got two very strong drivers that are able to compete against, ultimately, currently, in the championship, one car that’s really up there, doing a lot of the point scoring on the other side. So they’ve got something they can work with for sure.”