“He’s smoking and eating pancakes”- Lewis Hamilton references Dutch villain while describing Max Verstappen’s title charge

Lewis Hamilton recently described Max Versatppen's dominance by referencing a quote from a classic film, saying that Verstappen was 'smoking and eating pancakes.'

Hamilton was asked if it was too easy for Verstappen to win with such a dominant car. As per Business News, he replied:

"What do you want to tell me? I haven’t spoken to him, he’s smoking and eating pancakes. You know the movie?"

The 'movie' Lewis Hamilton referenced is Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002), in which the antagonist 'Goldmember' is Dutch. Goldmember has a strong accent, and at one point he asks Austin Powers if he would like to have some 'smoke and a pancake.'

The movie is quite famous, and this is not the first time that Lewis Hamilton has drawn a comparison between Goldmember and Max Verstappen's accent. During an earlier press conference, Verstappen said 'father' in a very Dutch accent and Hamilton reacted by jokingly saying it sounded like Goldmember's accent.

Verstappen won the Belgian Grand Prix on Sunday while Hamilton finished fourth with the fastest lap of the race, behind Charles Leclerc's Ferrari. The Brit was much behind P1, which Verstappen claimed with ease despite starting P6.

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Lewis Hamilton reveals Mercedes faced 'bouncing' again last weekend, similar to 2022

Mercedes has been on a recovery road since the rather horrifying 2022 season. The team was expected to battle for the world championship in 2023 but they have only dropped further back.

One of the major concerns with the W13 last season was the violent 'porpoising' or bouncing, which saw them running lower downforce.

The W14 was supposedly prepared to battle this. Though they were not very competitive in the initial stages of 2023, Mercedes gained a lot of places after the Spanish Grand Prix by bringing in a new side pod design.

They are currently second in the standings, having left Aston Martin behind.

However, much to the horror of the Brackley-based outfit, after Lewis Hamilton finished P4 in Belgium he revealed that the car faced similar issues in 2022. He told Sky Sports:

"It was kind of a non-eventful race. There wasn't much going on and I wasn't able to keep up with the cars ahead of me."

"Struggled at the beginning, rear end is our biggest issue and we had big bouncing this weekend, so we were back to the bouncing like we had last year."

He added that the team would be looking further into the data to figure out what caused the issue.

"(The team) don't know (what's caused the bouncing). To me it is a concern but we'll work through the data this week and try and figure out what we do for the next race."

They will have a month's time to think about it since the F1 summer break has now begun.