by VALERIO BARRETTA
Suzuka, Hamilton finally smiles
For the first time this season, Lewis Hamilton beats George Russell. At Suzuka, the seven-time world champion precedes his teammate on the starting grid and can finally smile at having finally found the feeling with a car that he hadn't had in his hands at all until Melbourne.
Hamilton's words
Seventh place on the grid certainly cannot satisfy Hamilton at all. Looking ahead, however, this is an excellent result, which can give confidence in view of tomorrow and the rest of the season: “I gave everything. The team did a great job understanding and making changes to our set-up. This is the first weekend I haven't gone crazy with the setup and I haven't tried a lot of things, so I'm back to a little bit of normality“, these are the words of the Briton to his compatriots Sky Sports UK. “I think the machine managed to get into a much nicer working window. Of course, the others are faster, but last year we were one second behind Red Bull: seven tenths is a better gap and with something different we could have been within six tenths. But I've really enjoyed riding this weekend so far“.
“Qualifying was overall a very good session. I think this weekend we made some good improvements to the car and its balance. All in all I was much happier with the car compared to previous weekends, although there are clear areas for improvement. However, we have taken steps in the right direction. Of course I hoped to achieve more and we will never be happy with seventh position, but we know that we are working on our car“, these are his words to Mercedes channels.
“Tomorrow's race will be all about tire degradation. Our long run pace seemed similar to other Fridays, so we'll see if that's the case on Sunday. I believe that tomorrow the race will be very close, so I hope that we will be able to make the most of all the various factors and bring home some good points“.
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