Hamilton: Mercedes still “far behind” Ferrari and Red Bull

During the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, the British driver Lewis Hamilton had to settle for a lowly tenth place at the finish, while the Ferrari and Red Bull teams claimed the top four positions in the standings.

The race was eventful for the Mercedes driver. Starting fifteenth on the grid, he managed to move up to sixth place during the race. However, he was unable to pit during the deployment of the safety car. As a result, Lewis Hamilton’s W13 was demoted to twelfth place. In the end, Hamilton secured a tenth-place finish on new medium tires.

For the seven-time world champion, the pace of the W13 is far from sufficient to be able to compete at the front.

« Right now, we’re not fighting for the top spot, we’re still far behind the guys in front and we have a lot of work to do. It looks like we have a long road ahead,” Lewis Hamilton revealed. « We need more grip and more power. The end result wasn’t good, but the race itself went very well. I felt particularly good on the hard tires. I was following George and I think I managed to match his pace at certain moments, considering the tire degradation and the final strategy,” the seven-time world champion delivered.

(I) I don’t know if it was the strategy or the virtual safety car, but we lost a lot, so I think we’re going to keep working hard and fighting because that’s all we can do,” he continued, revealing that he didn’t suffer too much from the bottlenose dolphin-ing during this Grand Prix.

However, the British driver stated that he lacks straight-line speed.

“We are still below in terms of speed,” he lamented. “I don’t know if it’s just one adjustment or several, I don’t know what drag we have compared to the others, but it seems like a lot to me.”