Lewis Hamilton is not satisfied with his first day in Miami
Although he finished the first free practice session in second place, Lewis Hamilton was quickly relegated to nearly a second behind Max Verstappen.
Hope was supposed to be there after the first practice session. Both Mercedes cars finished at the top of the session. But a few hours later, the trend was no longer the same. Lewis Hamilton finished 9th, George Russell 15th.
These results are not to the liking of the seven-time world champion. He is looking for new adjustments to optimize his performance and gain a few tenths. “I will remain optimistic and hope that we can place the car in a better position for [Saturday], and perhaps gain a few places compared to [yesterday],” the British driver said.
(English) We were not particularly fast and we had to fight on the field. The grip is quite low on this new surface. It is slippery, especially for the rear of the car. The track temperature was very high today and there was a lot of sliding.
We are going to regroup, see if we can make some adjustments and put the car in better conditions.
Last year, the Mercedes driver finished in sixth place in the race.
Toto Wolff believes that the car is unpredictable
« I think that the car has qualities, but it is very delicate to exploit them, whether it is in terms of optimizing the settings or driving it to its maximum. » explains the director of Mercedes.
« If both drivers have confidence in the car, it can be fast, but they are on a razor’s edge, and when pushed a little too far, it becomes really difficult. It’s unpredictable, it slides during braking, and it understeers. I mean, it does pretty much everything you shouldn’t do. »
« And this morning, we seemed to be in a good position with the car. I don’t think we can extrapolate this result, we drove later than everyone else. But at least, it’s more encouraging than in Baku. »
Toto Wolff reacted to Lewis Hamilton’s remarks and added: “A good car is a car that drivers can push and feel that it doesn’t do anything unpredictable. Unfortunately, we had this problem last year and this year, especially during qualifying, where you really have to push the limits, and the drivers have not been able to find confidence in the car.”
