Lewis Hamilton was in something of a low key mood after the race at Spa having dropped from pole to third place – and lost crucial points to both Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso in the title fight.
On the plus side he has moved ahead of Kimi Raikkonen. Nevertheless Hamilton clearly wasn’t happy about being overtaken first by Vettel and then Alonso. He didn’t have the speed with which to hold on to either of his rivals, just a few weeks after his impressive performance in Hungary.
“It’s difficult when people pull away from you, there’s nothing you can do about it,” said Hamilton. “I feel happy that we’ve extended our lead ahead of Ferrari, collectively me and Nico, and also I’m up to third. I’ve come and done what I planned to do, but it’s difficult when he pulls away at the rate he sometimes pulls away.”
Hamilton said that he’d struggled for straight line speed with the Spa aero package, and fears more of the same at Monza.
“It’s difficult to understand what we’ve missed out, but I think the guys will work over the next few days to try and understand where we were slower. But Eau Rouge was particularly slow for us, and down the straights. Maybe we’ll be able to unlock something before the next race, but if not then I’m hoping that Singapore onwards we’ll be much stronger.
“They’re more windy circuits, more high downforce circuits. When you come to these two circuits, this one and the next one, you get a downforce package and you’re kind of stuck with it. It either has or hasn’t worked. We may improve in the next race, or we may be in the same position.
“We won’t be any worse, that’s for sure. From then onwards we’ll have the higher downforce package that we had in the previous races, but it should be hopefully improved again. So I’m hoping that we’ll be more competitive from then on.”
Meanwhile regarding Vettel’s lead in the championship he said: “It’s a big, big gap, it’s a huge gap, it’s going to be tough to close that. I’m going to keep pushing.
“It’s going to be very, very tough, undoubtedly. He’s had a phenomenal car for a long, long time, and it still is phenomenally quick and does the job, so it’s a perfect package.
“We’ve had some really strong races but we’ve been there or thereabouts and competing with them, and we have finished ahead of them in the past, so it doesn’t meant that we can’t do that in the next races. But it’s getting closer and closer to the point where we really need to be finishing ahead every single time to close that gap.”
Adam Cooper F1 
The illegal tyre test advantage is gone.
I notice that Lewis talked about Vettel always having the better car but not acknowledging that maybe Vettel himself is a better driver.
With the greatest respect to Lewis, Seb has won races where his car has had no top speed… now the boot is on the other foot. Hungary and Silverstone demonstrated that the Mercedes is pretty damn good downforce wise now, and the Merc engine is potent. Thus I believe the issues this weekend were down to setup/aero package.
Lewis also needs to remember that last season at McLaren he was the team with the fastest car for 70% of the season, not Seb. You could argue that Spa was only the second race of the year where Red Bull have had that fastest car, with Mercedes, Ferrari and Lotus taking that honour at other races.
After saying all that though, I do believe that Spa was Lewis’ best performance of the year. He still needs to shut up about the RBR though, Webber is at least as good as Rosberg and can’t get near Vettel – that says plenty to me.
@Adam – slightly off topic, but I keep hearing rumours that the Merc engine will be better than those of Renault/Ferrari. Is there any truth in this or is it just paddock gossip? It seems slightly illogical to me really, Mercedes haven’t really done high performance turbo engines (Sauber c8/c9 in late 80s – but that’s ages ago!) whilst Renault for example has years and years of experince making small capacity Turbo engines in various forms of motorsport.
The logic would suggest that Renault would be the one to have, possibly the the Ferrari engine (given their experiences with Fiat/Maserati etc) and then the Mercedes.. ?
Slightly miss-quoting what I have read elsewhere from Lewis’s comments, but enough to shift the perspective of his comments….
Elsewhere he is quoted something along the lines of…
“He’s had a phenomenal car for a long, long time, and it still is phenomenally quick and HE does the job, so it’s a perfect package”… dropping the “HE” leads all the trolls to surmise that Lewis either doesnt rate or respect Vettel, or that its all about the car….