Lewis Hamilton is Not Getting the Best out of Car Despite Five 1-2 Finishes

Published 05/19/2019, 5:13 AM EDT

Follow Us

via Imago

In a surprising confession, Mercedes driver, Lewis Hamilton has said that he is unable to eke out every bit of performance from the W10. However, with the team snatching five 1-2 finishes, it is easy to think that he is lying through his teeth.

However, there is a grain of truth, as Hamilton has struggled a few times this season. Case in point, in the last three races, Lewis Hamilton has been beaten to pole position by his teammate. So, he spent the day in the Mercedes factory in order to get to grips with the W10.

“The cars are pretty much set-up the same,” said Lewis Hamilton to RaceFans. “I drive the tyres slightly differently in the race. Often I’m able to eke them out a little bit longer. That currently is still a benefit.

ADVERTISEMENT

Article continues below this ad

“The car is obviously great but I’ve generally struggled with the car from Australia, [I’m] having similar kind of problems with the car since Australia. My qualifying in Australia was just OK, I was only a tenth ahead. When I get things right it should be different to that.”

via Imago

His primary concern was, ‘Was Bottas‘ driving style the key to him being faster?’. This was mostly to gauge if the Finn’s driving style was better for single lap pace.

ADVERTISEMENT

Article continues below this ad

“Valtteri’s settled nicely into the car, he’s quite happy,” said Hamilton. “I don’t know if it’s driving style yet, I’m still looking into it.”

“But there are definitely areas I will continue to focus on in the factory this week. I’ll be dialling in to try to really understand. And ultimately I’ll go around and talk to different departments engineering-wise and try to collate as much data as possible so I can apply it better in the next race.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Article continues below this ad

“Fridays and Saturdays have not been great days for me. The goal is to improve on them. But the races have been very strong performance-wise and pure delivery on a Sunday I’ve been really happy with.”

SHARE THIS ARTICLE :

Written by:

Dhruv George

14,318Articles

One take at a time

Dhruv George is a senior Formula One and NASCAR analyst for EssentiallySports, having authored nearly 12000 articles spanning different sports like F1, NASCAR, Tennis, NFL, and eSports. He graduated with a PG Diploma in Journalism from the Xavier Institute of Communications. Dhruv has also conducted interviews with F1 driver Pierre Gasly and Moto2 rider Tony Arbolino.
Show More>