Helmut Marko ridicules Lewis Hamilton's 'memory' while dismissing the Mercedes driver's plea to the FIA

Red Bull chief Helmut Marko has dismissed Lewis Hamilton's plea to the FIA and mocked the Mercedes driver's 'bad memory'.

Last weekend in Austria, Hamilton appealed to the FIA that there needs to be a restriction on when teams can start working on next year's car. He talked about how Red Bull's advantage this season means that it can shift focus entirely to the next season while its competitors can't.

Lewis Hamilton advocated a deadline date of August 1 that should be set for every team to start developing its next year's challenger.

The Mercedes driver, however, received pushback from Red Bull as team principal Christian Horner dismissed the idea because of its lack of practicality. Max Verstappen also questioned why Lewis did not raise such a thing when Mercedes was dominating.

Red Bull chief advisor Helmut Marko has now dismissed Lewis Hamilton's suggestion saying that the driver had a bad memory and forgot how he reaped benefits from the same thing. The 80-year-old told Motorsport.com:

“He apparently has a pretty bad memory. In the years that Mercedes dominated, they also started work on the car for the following year much earlier than other teams."

He added:

"Then they mainly had a superior engine, one that could deliver much more horsepower than the rest. If you don’t have to put energy into this year’s chassis, then of course you will already look at next year. That’s just how Formula 1 works.”

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What had Lewis Hamilton said that induced this kind of reaction?

During the 2023 F1 Austrian GP, Lewis Hamilton insisted that Mercedes could probably catch up with Red Bull this season. But he stated that the team has already begun work on next year's car.

Talking about the impact of such a scenario, Hamilton said that the Austrian team will continue to hold the advantage, and F1 needed to intervene to stop that from happening.

He told Sky F1:

“I think the FIA should probably put a time when everyone is allowed to start developing for the next year’s car. So August 1, that’s when everybody can start, so that no one can get an advantage from the next year. Because that sucks.”

There was some pushback to Hamilton's comments from the fans as well but one has to perhaps understand the mindset of the Mercedes driver. As a competitor, he's trying his best to gain anything and crawl back some of the advantages that Red Bull enjoys at the moment.