Tag Archives: Lewis Hamilton

March 27, 2015 · 8:16 am

Lewis Hamilton: “The Ferraris look great, they really do…”

Lewis Hamilton finished Friday on top of the times at Sepang, but it was a far from easy day for the Mercedes driver.

Hamilton stopped on track in FP1 with what turned out to be an inlet issue, and by the time it was addressed he had missed the first half of FP2. He also suffered with telemetry issues in both sessions which further restricted his lappery.

“Firstly it was just an amazing job done by my guys to rebuild the car and get the engine back on, and gearbox and everything, and get me back out,” said Hamilton. “I’m very grateful for that. Particularly here where it’s so hot it’s so difficult for the tyres and everything, it was really important to get back out and do some laps.”

He added that the lost track time was costly: “It affects you quite a bit. Fortunately I got a few laps of a longer run at the end, but in terms of my set-up I’ve not made any changes, so I’ve just driven what I have. It’s quite a bit off with where I probably need it.

“I know my lap wasn’t spectacular. As I said I think I’ve got some improvements I can make with the balance and the settings, they were all kind of brought from the last race. I’m sure we’ll tweak it and improve it a little bit.”

Meanwhile Hamilton admitted he was impressed by the main competition.

“The Ferraris look great, they really do. It’s surprising to see how good their times are. We’ll see whether that continues through the weekend.”

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March 26, 2015 · 9:29 am

Red Bull’s call to rein in Mercedes is “funny,” says Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton said today that he finds Red Bull’s call for the FIA to rein in Mercedes as “funny” – given the success that RBR had in previous years.

Hamilton is adamant that Mercedes has worked hard to get where it is today.

“I find it quite funny,” he said when asked by this writer about Christian Horner’s comments. “It’s an interesting opinion coming from individuals who have had so much success. Also it’s only been one race, so to already have comments after the first race is what I find funny.

“And then on the personal side it was a big step for me to come to this team that had had so many years of poor performance – they hadn’t had the success of other teams. Not once did this team ever complain to others in order to equalise things, they just worked their arses off. We came to this team and saw them making that progress, and now they’re the best team, we’ve pulled together and done an amazing job.

“It’s not just me here it’s more than a thousand people working back at the two factories to build the best car, and we’ve done that with the same rules and the same resources that the other top teams have generally had. I’m really very proud of that. I think it’s kind of a funny situation.”

Hamilton is confident that Mercedes can stay ahead as this season unfolds: “With my understanding of the rules and how F1 is, and knowing how limited your time is in the wind tunnel and development, we all have that same amount of time. Providing we push forward thr same speed as everyone else, we should stay ahead. I believe the team will do that. Of course we never knew what others were going to do coming into the season, we didn’t know how much improvement others would have done.

“But we’re obviously very pleased with the work the team has done – obviously we were pretty competitive last year, and to still make an improvement on top of that is pretty exceptional. It’s a true showing of how amazing this team is now. If these people stay in the same place, and the right philosophy is taken, this team will be strong for many, many years.”

Meanwhile Lewis is hoping that he can keep up his Australian GP form.

“It’s only one qualifying session and Nico didn’t get his qualifying session right. I’m happy that I was able to perform that way and I plan to keep performing in that way. It still wasn’t perfect and I can improve, and with the race I think it just continued generally what I was doing for. There’s not really much progress – it’s small increments.

“I think Nico will be quick this weekend and he’ll be pushing as hard as he always did last year in qualifying. I’ve just got to try and keep up the momentum from the last race if I can.”

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November 24, 2014 · 11:23 am

Rosberg gremlins leave bitter sweet feeling, says Wolff

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff says it’s a relief that the World Championship has been resolved after the tensions involved in managing an intra-team battle – while emphasising his disappointment that technical gremlins once again cropped up in Nico Rosberg’s car.

“First of all it’s a relief now,” he said. “Although we knew that we’d won the driver’s championship before, we knew that it was going to be a challenge in staying neutral, and balancing out between the drivers. For us it was a particular challenge, so now that it’s over, it’s a relief.

“But then there is also a bitter sweet feeling left. Lewis Hamilton won 11 races, he deserved to be World Champion, he had a really incredible season. He had downs, and many ups, and at the end he’s a worthy World Champion.

“The bitter part is we worked so hard in such a diligent way to make the car reliable to enable the boys to fight it out on track, and that we had the problem with Nico’s car is something which gives it a bitter taste, and I feel that we let him down a little bit. In hindsight you can say from a rational point of view at that stage it was already difficult to make it after he had that start.

“Nico not finishing for us is a personal drama, because we expected to give them two cars which made it to the end. Lewis not finishing, being in the lead of the championship and being in the lead of the race, would have been an even bigger drama. Nevertheless it doesn’t make it any more acceptable to see Nico’s car break down.”

Regarding the Hamilton/Rosberg relationship he said: “It will re-set a little bit over the winter and at the beginning of the season, before it gets competitive. It is very clear that if your team mate, the one in the same car, is your biggest competitor, your biggest enemy, that it’s getting tense.

“I have no doubt that we will have similar situations and similar challenges next year again between the two. Anything else wouldn’t be normal. It’s just that we maintain it on the current levels of professionalism and respect.”

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November 3, 2014 · 1:25 am

Lewis Hamilton: “Nico wasn’t defending there really…”

Lewis Hamilton took a step closer to securing the 2014 World Championship with his fifth straight victory at Austin, giving himself a 24-point lead over team mate Nico Rosberg.

Thanks to double points the title battle will now go own to the wire in Abu Dhabi as even a victory in Brazil with Rosberg failing to score would leave him only 49 points ahead.

“It’s been an incredible run,” said Hamilton. “This whole season has been incredible really. Just an unbelievable job done by the team. Nico was very quick in qualifying yesterday. Obviously I said I had a couple of problems and I corrected them today and, never know how the race is going to go but I pushed as hard as I could, particularly in the first stint. And the second stint I seemed to be even quicker on that stint. Once I got past Nico it was really just about controlling it. Coming here today, just having that same determination and hunger to get that win. And, as I said, there’s not a better crowd really to do that in front of.”

Hamilton’s move on Rosberg was the key to his win: “It’s obviously a very good circuit to be able to follow but it’s not easy and it was very hard through the middle sector to try to stay as close to him as possible and get as close as I could to the DRS zone. And I was quite a bit back, I would say, but I felt very confident, there was a big headwind into 12, and I just felt like I was waiting for the moment really, to just be just close enough to throw it up the inside. And that’s what I did.

“You have to decide how much of a risk you’re willing to take. Nico wasn’t defending there really so I almost caught him unaware. And after that, really I was just trying to maintain it.”

Lewis said he really enjoyed his week in the USA: “I just went into the race with the belief that I could win it. Incredible support from my fans, even from when I was in New York this week. The support from my fans and the tons of flags out there and team tops and team caps, I really am so grateful for that support that I have here in the US. It’s amazing. I hope it continues to grow over the years. Great weather, the circuit’s just fantastic. I went into the race thinking I need another race just like 2012 and it was just like that.

“I was catching him through exactly the same points at which I was catching Sebastian. There wasn’t a moment in the race when I didn’t think that I would get him. Once I was past, as I said, I was able to relax for a second and really try to manage the tyres, because I knew that perhaps he would push at some other point. And so I was always having to respond. It’s such a great feeling when you have a race like that, it just feels great that you’ve really done it as best as you can.”

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October 31, 2014 · 9:40 pm

Lewis Hamilton: “I guess I’ll get a better feel in the race…”

Lewis Hamilton was 0.003s faster than team mate Nico Rosberg in practice in Austin today, but it was not a perfect day for the championship leader.

Hamilton was forced to sit out the last part of FP2 after suffering a hydraulic leak, yet another sign of a reliability problems at Mercedes.

“They just said there was some fluid on the floor,” said Hamilton. “There was a leak of some sort, I don’t think it was anything too concerning. It doesn’t help when you lose a little bit of time on the long run, because you get a real good understanding of how much you can push, how much you have to save fuel, and those kinds of things.

“Nico had the whole session and hopefully in terms of the team we’ll learn in terms of the team and understanding the data and everything. For me I guess I’ll get a better feel in the race…”

Meanwhile Mercedes technical chief Paddy Lowe said: “It was a hydraulic issue, quite a small thing. We don’t know exactly what, but we made a precautionary stop. We had two or three things going on at the same time. Reliability is a really important factor in the championship overall, and it’s becoming particularly pointy at the moment with the two drivers heading towards Abu Dhabi, It’s a big challenge for us to make sure we give them sisx car finishes in the next three races.”

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July 5, 2014 · 8:18 pm

Lewis Hamilton: “I just chose not to do the lap…”

Lewis Hamilton admitted it was his own fault after he abandoned his final qualifying lap at Silverstone – and saw his pole position turn into sixth place as five other drivers finished their laps and went faster.

Hamilton crossed the line to start the lap just in front of team mate Nico Rosberg, but feeling that the lap would be slower, he chose to abort it, and let his team mate through.

However the final sector proved to be much drier than anyone had anticipated, and those who completed the lap gained huge chunks of time.

“It just didn’t feel good, there’s no other reason for it,” said Lewis. “I lost a lot of time at the beginning of the lap, I was already one and a half seconds down.

“I’ve never in my life ever given up, and today it wasn’t a case of giving up, I just chose not to do the lap, because it wasn’t feeling right, it wasn’t feeling like it was going to be quicker. I had no information from the team that the last sector was going to be 4.5-5s faster. From driving through it I thought that it wasn’t, so I took that decision.”

Asked whether his engineers – who had no sector time data on which to draw – should have kept him better informed, he said: “I don’t really remember much radio communication, I do remember them saying something about Nico, not holding him up.

“It wasn’t their fault. I should have done that [carried on]. But I didn’t, that’s that, move on, move forward. A long race tomorrow, so I’ll try to salvage what I can from it.”

Hamilton expects to have a tough time gaining ground on Sunday.

“I feel tomorrow is going to be damage limitation again. We’ve got over 100,000 people here tomorrow, and hopefully they’ll energise me. I’ve got a lot of Mercedes cars ahead, which are going to be very hard to overtake, it’s not going to be as easy as it was in the last race. And also conditions could be up and down tomorrow. Anything’s possible here, as we’ve seen in the past.”

Asked by this writer if his Austrian first lap gave him some inspiration he said: “Not really. I’ve done a hundred or so Grands Prix, and that was the only one of probably three very good first laps for me. But what it did show was that it’s possible, so I’ll try and do the same again.”

However, he made it clear that Rosberg has the upper hand after Lewis lost priceless track time in FP2: “Nico had a long run yesterday so he knows where the car is for the heavy fuel load, and also he’s got a nice, clean sweep of air in front of him, so I would imagine Nico will be sailing off into the distance. I’ve got to wiggle my way through the guys in front first, and that’s really my main focus.”

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April 21, 2014 · 11:39 am

Toto Wolff: “We have to stay with both feet on the ground…”

Mercedes F1 chief Toto Wolff insists that the team has to keep its feet on the ground despite its flying start to the season.

Wolff pointed to the fact that Nico Rosberg had to work hard to get up to second place in China after dropping as low as seventh on the first lap.

“It was not easy in the first stint, in terms of performance, the cars were different,” said Wolff when asked by this writer. “Nico lost the telemetry before the formation lap, so you’re basically blind in the car. The way he handled the situation was really good. In the first stint it wasn’t easy for him to overtake cars, and he was following Ricciardo, and there was just no way even on the straight to get past him.

“It just shows you need to get things right, and you have to qualify well. Then at the end strategy-wise we took the right decisions. We were pushing the second stint quite long because we knew that at the end he had to manage the tyres, and this is I guess why Alonso had to back off at a certain stage, because he knew he was not going to finish the race on that pace.”

Regarding the opposition, he said: “We have to be cautious. They’re coming, you saw Alonso today, you saw Ricciardo, last stint again times to our cars. It is quite interesting because what you saw also in the last couple of races that you have situations in the race on worn tyres where suddenly the times seem to be much more closed up.

“As I mentioned Ricciardo was matching Lewis’s times and Nico’s times. In the second stint it wasn’t the case, Lewis was holding but Nico was struggling behind Ricciardo. So we have to find out the way our competitors supply the energy and how the efficiency and fuel consumption works, because it looks like sometimes they go faster and then they don’t seem to manage it until the end of the race.”

Wolf admits the start to the season was better than expected, despite the clear hints from testing.

“Yes it is better. I think you cannot go into a season with these new regulations and think we’re going to make four wins in a row. And I guess that also in a couple of years we’ll look back at the statistics and say, wow, that was a run. You can’t take it for granted. You spot yourself looking… We have one car leading and the other car is fifth or sixth, and you say that’s not good. We have to stay with both feet on the ground and keep the development curve steep and keep pushing, because no doubt it’s going to close up.”

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March 14, 2014 · 8:42 am

Lewis Hamilton: “I didn’t even get round half a lap…”

Lewis Hamilton bounced back from a disastrous start to finish the first day in Australia on top of the times, emphasising that as expected Mercedes will set the pace this weekend.

Hamilton stopped on track at the start of FP1 due to a sensor issue, but ran 37 troublefree laps in the second session to head team mate Nico Rosberg by just 0.157s.

“To miss the first session is kind of unusual, I didn’t even get round half a lap, I had to stop,” he said. “It’s a shame because there was the 10-15 minutes when no one was running, they could easily have brought the car back. I felt I was really on the back foot already. But I got up to pace quite quickly and found the balance relatively fast as well, so I feel positive.

“I think basically we got a nice foundation in P2, so I hope I can build on that in P3, and see where we end up in qualifying. Of course it would have been great to have had P1, but at the end of the day I got enough running thankfully in P2, so I feel quite comfortable in the car. I’ve got a good understanding of what’s going on on the car on the track and fuel and all that kind of stuff. I feel positive. I’m glad I got through it.”

Lewis said he hadn’t had time to assess the opposition: “To be honest I’ve not really looked at anyone today, I’ve just focussed on myself. We’ll see tomorrow.”

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February 21, 2014 · 7:46 pm

Lewis Hamilton: “I want to break the car as much as possible…”

Lewis Hamilton says he’s not concerned about facing unreliability problems in testing if it means that any faults are discovered before the season starts.

Hamilton was tackling a race distance for Mercedes in Bahrain today but was stopped by a hydraulic issue.

“It’s not frustrating at all,” said Hamilton of today’s problem. “We feel quite blessed that we’ve done the mileage that we’ve already done. We are way ahead of where we thought we would be, and particularly some others. We actually see it as a blessing, because we find an issue, and then we know it’s got to go back to the drawing board.

“It could be a small pump that they’ve got to go and redesign and get fixed, that could have gone in Melbourne, or one the races coming up. It would have caught us out and it would have been delayed. I’m glad these bugs are coming, I’m trying to find more and more. I want to break the car as much as possible, so they can fix it for the races.”

Regarding the Merc’s form, he said: “We’re just working in trying to improve the car bit-by-bit. We won’t know until we get to Melbourne where we stand exactly.”

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November 18, 2013 · 5:46 pm

Lewis Hamilton: “I was doing a lot of soul searching…”

Lewis Hamilton has faced a few frustrating races in 2013, but in Austin the Mercedes driver was delighted with his drive to fourth place.

He’s had better results this year, but the key was that he felt able to push hard through the afternoon in the wake of a particularly frustrating race in Abu Dhabi.

“It felt great, I’m so happy that I was able to have a race where I was going forward, and I was able to stand my ground and look after my position,” he said. “It was finally great to just have a real race.

“At this point of the year I’m the fittest I’ve been through the last seven years. The last seven years have been so draining, all the stuff that I had going on. This year I feel the best, and unfortunately although I feel the best I wasn’t able to give the results. We’ve had some problems in the last races, and to come here and get a decent result and stay ahead of Ferrari, I really am so proud of the team. And I’m proud of myself today.”

Hamilton was relieved when the team found a crack in his chassis after Abu Dhabi, and replaced it with the spare. It’s impossible for the team to quantify any gains that may have resulted, but there was definitely a psychological boost.

“Naturally when you have bad races like the last one… I personally really don’t like to blame anything else on the car, especially if you can’t see anything, or you can’t feel it so much. Naturally for me I was doing a lot of soul searching over the last couple of weeks, do I need to train more, do I need to pay more attention to something, do I need to work harder?

“We came here and was just going to try and work even harder if I could, and then we found that big crack, and the car has been night and day different this weekend. I’m pretty happy with that.”

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