Lewis Hamilton has “been trying it all year” to perform with Ferrari, especially after F1 São Paulo GP Q2 exit.
With his first year in Ferrari closing in, Lewis Hamilton has been struggling to extract the performance he wants. During the F1 São Paulo GP qualifying, the Briton was not able to improve higher than P13 in Q2, with personal bests in Sectors 1 and 2.
Although Hamilton finished P7 in the earlier Sprint race after starting P11, he was not able to continue that upward momentum into main qualifying. When asked if there were changes to his set-up after the sprint, Hamilton answered, “No, the set-up was fine. […] It’s how it’s done in the garage.”
Hamilton also exited Sprint Qualifying after SQ2 earlier in the weekend. When asked if he has the same issues as before, the 40-year-old replied, “I don’t know. I can’t remember if it’s the same problem as before. It’s not the same.”
In Sprint Qualifying, Hamilton was not able to improve after yellow flags. Even with having a second go in Q2, he was not able to move out of P13. With everything else “fine” Hamilton struggled to get the rear tyres fired up.
“I think the execution in terms of the times we’ve gone out and everything is fine. It’s just the rears are at a place that I can’t get to temperature for those start times.“
Trying with Ferrari
The 7-time World Champion has not had the best of times with qualifying after moving to Ferrari this year. For example, Hamilton has reached Q3 15 times. Teammate, Charles Leclerc has done it 17 times.
When asked if he was motivated to perform with Ferrari, Hamilton noted, “I am, yeah. I’ve been trying it all year, but it just continues to go bad every weekend. But I’ll get up tomorrow and try again.”
With the F1 São Paulo GP coming up, Hamilton hopes to replicate or improve his positions gained during the earlier sprint. Although he was rather negative about it.
“We’ll see what happens. Another write-off weekend, I guess.“
