Lewis Hamilton has expressed his confusion over one key impending change for the 2022 season – the much heavier cars.
Next season’s new generation of contenders will be the heaviest in F1 history, with the minimum car weight currently sitting at 790kg.
Hamilton recently questioned the logic behind making the cars so much heavier and says it’s not the right direction, making the cars less nimble and unsuited for circuits like Monaco.
“I don’t understand why we’re going heavier,” Lewis said.
“I don’t understand particularly why we go heavier when there’s all this talk about being more sustainable – just as the sport is going in that direction.
“By going heavier and heavier and heavier, you’re using more and more energy. So that feels that’s not necessarily in the right direction or in the thought process.”
Hamilton said in comparing the weight and size of today’s contenders to back in the day, it has clearky contributed to the fact that it’s near impossible to overtake at the narrow circuits like Monaco.
“The lighter cars were more nimble, were nowhere near as big, naturally, and so racing, manoeuvring the car, was better,” he said.
“On the tracks we’re going to, they’re getting wider. In Baku it’s quite wide in places and of course it’s narrow in other places.
“Monaco was always relatively impossible to pass, but now the cars are so big that it’s too big for the track.
“And, as I said, as we get heavier and heavier, that’s more energy we’ve got to dissipate – bigger brakes, more brake dust, more fuel to get you to the locations.
“So, I don’t fully understand it.”
