F1 Spa, Hamilton does what he can: 4th place and fastest lap
He tried, but today his Mercedes couldn’t give him a tenth more: Lewis Hamilton he thus had to settle for a fourth place which dutifully rewarded his solid race. Starting from the third box, the Briton took advantage of the slowness of the McLaren and the problems of Carlos Sainz to maintain the podium area. As long as he enjoyed Charles’ DRS Leclerc managed to keep Max at bay Verstappen, but once he lost contact with the Ferrari driver Sir Lewis he had no more weapons to defend himself against a Red Bull that makes the Dutchman’s task seem easy. Even too much, for his tastes.
Hamilton’s words
“I think today we struggled a bit to get close to Leclerc’s times, he was too fast, otherwise if I had the chance I would have tried to fight“, these are the words of Hamilton a Sky Sports F1. “The only thing I could do today was to take the fastest lap away from Verstappen, he had gone away, he generated a huge gap and it’s a bit too simple for him and for Red Bull“.
Look to 2024
Even with the further large package of updates the W14 has not made a noticeable step forward. And so Hamilton looks to 2024: “I did the best I could with the package I had available, Looking forward to a new car next year. We are trying them all with the car we have and we are doing everything to keep the 2nd place in the constructors: if I can finish 3rd in the Drivers’ World Championship it would be great, but more than this I can do. My share of the season I think has been pretty good“.
“We are not fighting for the world championship, there has been progress and setbacks, ups and downs. For my part I am very happy with the personal performance, I feel more comfortable in the car but there’s always that problem we’ve had for a long time“, concluded the seven-time world champion referring to jumping, which returned conspicuously this weekend. “We are working well, but it will take very big steps to try and take the car in the right direction“.
Russell’s words
Bitter taste even for George Russellwho finished in sixth place, behind Fernando Alonso: “I thought that today I could have fought with Lewis for the podium. Unfortunately, in the opening lap I got stuck behind Piastri, which suffered damage in the first corner. This cost me a couple of positions and compromised my Grand Prix. After that it was a good race for us and we increased the gap on third place in the Constructors’ Championship to 51 points. It has been a busy first half of the season for all team members, we are looking forward to taking a break and unwinding for a few weeks before returning to racing at Zandvoort. We know that our goal is to win and I’m still convinced we can do it this season“.
#Hamilton #easy #Verstappen