Hamilton Hopes To Get 'Past Ferrari As Quick As Possible' As He Describes 'Insane' Red Bull
F1Sunday, 30 June 2024 at 10:37
The seven-time World Champion Lewis Hamilton discussed the situation he found himself in during the post-qualifying interviews in Austria.
After achieving his first Grand Prix podium of the season in Barcelona, Lewis Hamilton came to Austria motivated to repeat the success.
As tends to be the case in the 2024 season, Mercedes yet again looked strong in the practice session, but then lost a bit of pace compared to others moving forward.
The 39-year-old driver placed sixth in both sprint qualifying and the sprint race and then improved by one position during the qualifying session for the race on Sunday. Speaking to Sky Sports F1 afterward, he said:
"We made some progress with the balance. I should have probably started the weekend with this balance. The middle sector was down."
"My pace this morning wasn't good, but we've improved the car. I need to get past the Ferrari as quick as possible."
Hamilton's best lap time in Q3 was 0,063 seconds slower than his teammate George Russell in P3. However, it was more than half a second slower than the triple World Champion Max Verstappen in P1.
"We've made changes since qualifying and the car was better. No real major issues. We were down a lot in the high-speed compared to Max. A lot. It's insane how much faster they are in the high speed. They're around 12-13 kph faster."
The seven-time World Champion had hopes of potentially winning a race this year after the P3 in the tenth round of the season in Spain. However, after seeing the qualifying gap to Verstappen, he admitted it feels more distant yet again.
"The notion of us potentially winning a race this year, when you get a half-second gap like today, it makes it a little bit further down the road. But we've got to keep pushing."
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