Every time Lewis Hamilton is eliminated in Q1, which is seemingly every race weekend at this point, Sky Sports spend the next 10 minutes analyzing to viewers what could have possibly gone wrong, studying the Sky Pad, patronizing their largely British audience, looking for excuses, and saying that he's allowed to have a bad day because he's still the GOAT.
At some point, you just have to admit what most Formula 1 fans have known for the past four years now: Hamilton is long past his prime as a Formula 1 driver.
Of course, you'd never actually expect that kind of behavior from Sky Sports when it comes to a British driver, much less one with Hamilton's long list of achievements, but that's beside the point.
In Las Vegas, the seven-time world champion qualified dead last (20th). In SQ1 ahead of the sprint race at Lusail International Circuit in Qatar, he qualified 18th, beating only the Alpine duo of Pierre Gasly and Franco Colapinto. Alpine are a distant last in the constructor standings and are actually expected to be back there.
Hamilton isn't.
And both instances led to in-depth analysis from Sky Sports as to why their long-time favorite driver couldn't manage to beat five of the other 19 drivers and advance into Q2 with a top 15 lap time.
Lewis Hamilton probably should have retired years ago
For as "mid" as Ferrari have been this year, Charles Leclerc has consistently outperformed Hamilton. Aside from Hamilton's China sprint victory, which will probably go down as the single-most random highlight of his career (he somehow never won a sprint race at Mercedes), he has been scraping the bottom of the barrel for much of the year.
Sure, he's still sixth in the standings, but that's largely because, as non-competitive as he has been, he has still collected his points hauls (usually in the four- to eight-point range) by getting the car to right around where it should be, which is typically outside of the top five but inside the top 10.
The fact he's sixth in points for the team that's fourth in the constructor standings is actually kind of pleasantly surprising.
But he doesn't have a single podium finish this year; Leclerc has seven, and four drivers below the Ferrari duo in the standings, including Hamilton's Mercedes replacement Kimi Antonelli, have recorded at least one.
The fact is, Hamilton was never going to be a serious contender at Ferrari, despite the media fairytale that this was going to be the move to eventually make him Formula 1's first ever eight-time world champion.
During his final three years at Mercedes, he was consistently beaten by George Russell. Hamilton did finish ahead of his teammate in the standings 2023, but Russell beat him in 2022 and 2024, despite literally losing one of his three wins in 2024 and handing it to Hamilton via a post-race disqualification. Russell was the better driver, and it wasn't particularly close.
Hamilton, at this stage of his career, was never going to match Leclerc either. Of course, we'd be lying if we said we thought it would be this bad, but he was never going to magically rediscover his 2017 form and experience a full-blown career resurgence at the age of 40.
And that was pretty obvious from early in the year. He has looked defeated almost every time he has been shown on camera and/or interviewed, and his comment about the Qatar weather when asked about the sprint race just goes to show how easily he loses interest these days.
But when Sky Sports aren't busy blaming Max Verstappen for Hamilton's mistakes (or for something), they are busy coming up with other reasons why Hamilton is now a shell of his prime self.
All while laughably reminding fans (every single time) that "hey, this guy actually used to win a lot!"
Hamilton is under contract through 2026, and it's hard to imagine he won't return next year with the new regulations set to take effect. But it's starting to look more and more like the 2026 season will be his final season competing in Formula 1, with potential replacements already starting to emerge.