"Are you drinking or what?"- Former F1 driver snubs off Lewis Hamilton's winning chances at 2022 French GP

Mercedes demonstrated immense pace throughout the 2022 F1 Austrian GP, with Lewis Hamilton consistently improving his performances. Despite that, former F1 driver Gerhard Berger does not expect the Silver Arrows to challenge the likes of Ferrari and Red Bull this weekend at the 2022 F1 French GP. He also does not believe that the Briton has any chance of winning the race.

On the latest episode of the F1 Nation podcast, Berger was asked about the probability of Hamilton securing his first race win of the season this weekend ahead of George Russell and Carlos Sainz. The Austrian mocked the prospects and hilariously responded, saying:

“Which passport do you have? What’s going on with you guys, are you drinking or what?”

On a more serious note, he added, saying:

“For him, the toughest is that he lost the championship last year, because last year he would have put himself in the books as the most successful Formula 1 driver ever. Not winning the championship means it’s Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton. This, for him, in the way how he seeks to beat all the records, which has been very impressive until now, this is something where he needs to still win one championship.”

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Lewis Hamilton confident that Mercedes will win a race in the 2022 F1 season

While Mercedes have not secured a result higher than third in any race so far this season, they have undoubtedly come a long way from where they were at the beginning of the year. Lewis Hamilton too seems to have finally found a sweet spot with his 2022 challenger. He appears encouraged by his swiftly improving results, to the point that he does not believe that the prospects of Mercedes winning a race this season are too farfetched.

In a media interaction, the seven-time world champion said:

“[It’s] definitely [been] hugely encouraging. Particularly [because] for a long, long time, we would make changes and not see it do what [we thought] it was going to do or improve the car. It was a good step in Barcelona, but then we had several difficult races following it. Then we just had these last [few] races which were quite strong, and that’s really encouraged us that we’re moving in the right direction, that there really is potential in the car.”

“With a little bit more digging, a little bit more hard work, hopefully we can get a bit closer to having a chance of winning a race. So I truly believe we can get a race win this year.”

Mercedes certainly do not have the level of dominance in F1 that they have enjoyed over the past eight seasons but have definitely got an edge over Ferrari and Red Bull when it comes to reliability.