Hamilton Calls For More Upgrades After Getting Taste Of Top 3 In Qualifying

Sunday, 23 June 2024 at 10:00

Lewis Hamilton, who qualified in third place for the 2024 Spanish Grand Prix, called for more upgrades from his team during the following press conference.

Mercedes drivers Lewis Hamilton and George Russell qualified in P3 and P4 for the 2024 Spanish Grand Prix at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.

While the team principal, Toto Wolff, suggested the German team might have been hoping for an even better result, P3 and P4 confirm Mercedes's huge step forward recently.

Silver Arrows have been introducing upgrades at every single Grand Prix weekend for the last couple of races, and they now seem to be firmly in the fight for wins and podiums with other top 4 teams.

Speaking to the media during the post-qualifying press conference, the 39-year-old driver highlighted the gap between himself and Lando Norris's pole position time—0.318 seconds.

"Three-tenths off. It's a pretty big chunk. For a track like this, it's not too bad. I think, as I said, through the lap, there's a little bit of time. Probably could have been two-tenths, but still they have a slight advantage."

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Now that the seven-time World Champion has tasted the top three again, he is hungry for more, and he has called for more upgrades, which Mercedes might very well introduce over the next two races in Austria and Great Britain.

"For us to be that close on a track like this is a real good showing that we're going in the right direction."

"As I said, we've got some improvements that we need to bring over the next few races in order for us to be properly in range of those guys."

Time loss between final practice and qualifying:

One of the seven-time World Champion's problems in 2024 has been struggling to translate the pace from practice sessions into qualifying.

In Monaco, he said he could automatically expect to lose around two-tenths of a second and that he didn't expect to beat his 26-year-old teammate this season.

Despite managing to outperform Russell in the Grand Prix qualifying (for the second time this year), Hamilton suggests he still suffered from the same problem.

"I still feel like I've lost performance going into it [qualifying]. I've still lost a little bit going into quali, or from my perspective, maybe they just move forward, but I definitely feel like there was a little bit more. But just as you start to push the car, it doesn't like it."