After receiving a 20-second penalty for speeding in the pit lane, Hamilton dropped from P8 to P16 in the Sprint Race at the Miami Grand Prix. He qualified P8 right behind his teammate, George Russell in P7 for the Grand Prix, but he managed to clear him at the start.
Hamilton crossed the line sixth as the chequered flag was waved. He missed out on P5 by less than 0.2s following Carlos Sainz’s 5-second post-race penalty.
Mercedes who has not been having a great season, 4th in the constructors and 60 points behind McLaren, who is in third following the first race in the United States this season, brought in a big upgrade package which consisted a of new floor body, cooling louvres, front wing and front suspension into the Miami Grand Prix.
Hamilton’s teammate George Russell said that Mercedes is no longer a top-3 team with Ferrari and Red Bull as McLaren has passed them on pace now.
When asked about his opinion on the comments made by Russell, Hamilton said people can make their own assumptions.
“Well, I mean, I don’t know. I don’t really see the point, the reason, the importance of that.
“You’ve seen where we qualified. You’ve seen where we’ve been for the last […] you’ve seen where we are in the championship, so you can make your assumption from that.”
Hamilton had great battles with the Haas of Nico Hülkenberg during the opening laps of the race as they swapped places four times. The seven-time World Champion also pulled off a quality pass on Yuki Tsunoda at turn 13.
Running in P7, he was within DRS range of Perez from the Safety Car restart till the last few laps of the race. Following the contact between Piastri and Sainz, the Brit overtook the ailing Aussie for P6.
Hamilton talked about his great battles at the Miami Grand Prix and how the DRS helped him to keep up with the Red Bull driver for most of the last stint.
The 103-time Grand Prix winner expressed that it was nice to keep the top 5 in relatively close distance, even though they started to pull away from him towards the end.
“I had a good race today, yeah. I didn’t have the pace of the guys ahead of me, but I was just able to hold on with DRS.
“But if it wasn’t for the DRS, they probably would have […]they did start to pull away towards the end. But still, to keep them in distance was a really great feeling.
“But also I was on an offset tyre, not to Checo though. I was actually on the same tyre as him.”
