Lewis Hamilton was in a good mood after practice at Silverstone, despite finishing the afternoon session in eighth place after several spectacular moments.
The McLaren driver had been second fastest in the morning, and said that a set-up change in the lunch break went in the wrong direction. He’s confident that the car will be competitive again tomorrow when that is rectified.
This is McLaren’s first outing with its new blown diffuser package.
“Today we put on the new components, and I was well excited this morning,” said Hamilton. “The feeling in the car was positive. I was actually surprised at the pace we had this morning. We made some changes, and the changes we made to the car set-up actually didn’t make it better.
“Sometimes you find that’s the case. So we’ve got to go back to the set-up we had earlier on, and start from there again. Hopefully tomorrow the set-up will be better to drive. But generally I think the performance of the car is good.”
Lewis said he enjoyed the new track layout: “It was nice, it is bumpy, probably a bit more bumpy on our car for some reason, so that was we’re trying to fix. Otherwise it’s very fast, very flowing. I don’t think it upsets the swing of the track or anything. Like I’ve said it’s a little bit different turning right at Abbey instead of going left into the chicane. But it’s still very fast, it’s picking up grip bit by bit. There is a big bump going into Turn 11, but that just makes it more exciting.
“Through the couple of hairpins its very slippery. It’s low speed compared to the rest of the track, and obviously you set the car up for the high speed corners, but unfortunately that means at the low speed corners you struggle a little bit more, but that’s the sacrifice you have to make.
“I definitely feel we’ve made a step forward from Valencia. This is track a bit like Valencia where you’d normally see a second gap between us and Red Bull. I don’t think you’ll be seeing that gap tomorrow, I think it will be a lot closer hopefully. If we get the car set-up right, then we should have no problems.
“We knew that they (RBR) were going to be exceptionally fast this weekend, but we have not go the optimum out of the car yet. Tomorrow there’s more to come.”
He said it was hard to quantify the effect of the new package.
“I don’t know, all I can say is when I got in the car they didn’t know how much downforce it as going to give us. I had a big grin on my face when I got to full throttle. It makes a nice difference. I don’t know whether it makes as big a difference as perhaps they thought, but it’s something that you have to tweak.
“You saw the Ferraris ran theirs at the last race, and it didn’t just work. The same for Mercedes, it didn’t just work. You don’t just bolt it on and it works. It’s something you have to adjust. At least it’s running well. I do feel a difference. The front wing’s very good as well, and there’s clearly a lot of potential.”
Adam Cooper F1 