Sir Lewis Hamilton finished a slightly unexpected second in Spain, proving that the upgrade package for the W14 is a step in the right direction. He thanked the relentless efforts of the Brackley-outfit, but not after his traditional ‘thank you’ to the local fans, who cheered loudly when he stepped up to Nico Rosberg for the podium interview.
“Oh man! What an awesome crowd we have here, like every year. Gracias to everyone here in Barcelona!”
“What a result for our team. We definitely didn’t expect to have the result we had today, so I just really want to take my hat off to my team. A big big thank you to everyone back at the factory for continuing to push and bring us a little bit closer to the Bulls. They’re still a bit ahead, but we will keep chasing them down. This is an amazing result.
“George did a great job today as well. For George to come from 12th to third is just remarkable. So really awesome result for us as a team. Great result as a team.”
Bagging his 11th podium in Barcelona, Hamilton acknowledged the effort he and teammate George Russell have put in.
“This one was very special. And yeah, to be able to share the podium with my teammate, I think it’s really special given just the journey that we’ve been on together to try and close the gaps to the guys ahead. This is a really amazing day for us. Now everyone’s talking about the upgrades.”
The seven-time champion was struggling on Friday, but swung it around over the course of the weekend with a great qualifying pace and even better race pace. He praised the work done by Mick Schumacher and everyone at the factory to improve the balance.
“The car felt great today. Yeah, I think Friday was a real struggle with the balance. It was way out the window. It was very, very hard to drive, very unpredictable. And then we did some great work overnight. We got a great team with Mick back at the simulator on Friday night, and he did some great, great work, which helped us get on the right track on Saturday.
“And yeah, I think we did pretty decent work in trying to understand the different downforce levels. And the race today, the car felt great, honestly. It’s just I couldn’t match the times that Max was doing.”
Hamilton still thinks Red Bull will be difficult to catch, but he’s very positive about the coming races, knowing that the Spanish track is often indicative for the remainder of the season.
“They normally say if you’re quick in Barcelona, then you should be… But I think we will be strong in the next races. There’ll be times where Aston maybe is slightly ahead or the Ferrari maybe is ahead. But I think our race pace continues to be a strength of ours as it was last year.”
He added: “Now I think this weekend particularly, we’ve understood the car even more. So I think we can count on that being strong moving forwards. We just got to try and lift the overall performance of the car a little bit more to try and close the gap to these guys.”
The Briton had a small kerfuffle with his countryman Lando Norris in the first few corners, but Hamilton didn’t really notice anything except a firm hit.
“I mean, I just felt a big hit from behind. But obviously, Max and Carlos went quite wide and deep into turn one. And then they were coming back across. And I basically got in the wake. So I had to be patient. And then I got a hit from behind. I think it was a shame for Lando because he did such an amazing job yesterday. It’s great to see McLaren up there on the second row.
“And I think today probably, even if he was ahead of me going into the corner, we would have overtaken him because we had slightly more pace I would say race trim-wise. And so, yeah, not ended up being a great result for him.”
The Mercedes driver then added a little lesson for his McLaren colleague: “But I think, yeah, if he was just a little bit more patient today, I think he would have had probably a better result. But we live and we learn.”
