Lewis Hamilton praised qualifying for the Japanese Grand Prix as a breakthrough moment in his understanding of the Mercedes W15, and revealed that he has firm ideas about the direction of development required for F1 in 2024.
Hamilton has had his worst start to the 2024 season, finishing seventh or worse in the opening three races in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Australia.
Lewis Hamilton takes Mercedes W15 to new heights
The seven-time world champion suffered an engine failure just 15 laps into the final race in Melbourne and admitted his confidence in the Mercedes car was at an all-time low.
Hamilton had even more optimistic numbers in Japan this weekend, with the 39-year-old having consistently stayed within the top five throughout practice to qualify seventh, ahead of teammate George Russell on Saturday for the first time this season. exceeded.
Seventh on the grid, his lap is within six tenths of a second from Max Verstappen's pace-setting Red Bull time, which was more than a second off the reigning world champion at F1's last visit to Suzuka in September 2023. was.
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Speaking to Sky F1 after qualifying, Hamilton revealed that he has stopped tinkering with the set-up this weekend and now has a more thorough understanding of the W15's weaknesses.
he said: “I was giving everything.
“The team did a really great job last week of understanding and adjusting our setup.
“This is actually the first weekend that we haven't had a big fuss with set-up and testing, so I think we've been able to get back to a bit more normalcy and get the car in better shape.
“It was really fun driving every lap, the guys in front of me were just a little faster.
“Last year we were a little over a second behind Red Bull, but seven-tenths of a second is better. I think if we had done something a little different, we probably could have been a tenth faster. Maybe.
“But other than that, that was all.
“I think what it gave us was being able to know exactly where the car wasn't strong enough.
“You can feel it in the car and now you can tell them, 'Press this specific area.'”
“I hope the race will be even stronger and I’m really enjoying driving the car this weekend.”
Asked if Mercedes had established a good direction for car development for the rest of the season, he added:
“What we found was that it was really, really difficult to get the setup right from track to track and we were way off each time.
“In some places it felt like no matter what we did we just couldn't get the car in the sweet spot, and this weekend it's even more in the sweet spot.
“So I hope that continues in the next race and it's just a matter of adding more performance.”
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