Hamilton Let Down By His W15 Again: 'Car Is Never What I Hoped It Would Be'
F1Monday, 08 April 2024 at 13:30
The seven-time Wolf Champion Lewis Hamilton lamented yet another disappointing result during the fourth round of the season at Suzuka Circuit.
The Mercedes F1 driver started the race two positions ahead of his teammate George Russell, but by the final lap, he was two positions behind.
Even though he out-qualified his teammate for the first time this season, Hamilton couldn't deliver a good result for his team after immense struggles in his first stint on the hard compound tires.
He was caught by his teammate already in the first stint and just willingly offered to let him pass because he suffered from a significant understeer and lost too much time. Hamilton told the media after the race:
"The car is never what I hoped it would be. It's never what we hoped it would be. I got some damage I think in the first stint at the restart with Charles [Leclerc] and I had massive understeer, like huge, huge understeer."
"So that's why I decided to let George by, because he seemed quicker and I just couldn't turn the car."
The 39-year-old got his front wing adjusted during the consequent pitstop and was able to pick up his pace to close the gap to Russell by some margin, but he couldn't catch up with his British teammate by that point.
"It took us two stints to finally dial more and more wing in to make up for that loss. Last stint, I was better, but it was too late, I had 10 seconds to regain."
The seven-time World Champion was then asked whether he could take many positives from the Japanese Grand Prix weekend, and he responded:
"I don't know if you can take many positives from the weekend. The car finished which is good, but we're like, you know, seventh, eighth, ninth fastest, so… yeah."
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