\u00ab I don’t remember experiencing such a difficult weekend. The last one this tough was probably in Baku in 2016. \u00bb With these words, Lewis Hamilton highlights his lack of understanding regarding his performances during this Russian weekend.<\/p>\n
The triple world champion never found the hoped-for rhythm and, while his teammate Valtteri Bottas sped towards victory, he had to settle for a 4th place, off the podium: “I was simply not fast enough. I can’t explain it yet but we will have work to do this week to understand it. I have some ideas about the feeling experienced during the race and qualifying, but we still have a lot of work to do to make it happen,” stated a dejected Hamilton after his race.<\/p>\n
A race surprisingly won by his teammate Valtteri Bottas, whom the Briton does not fail to congratulate: \u00ab All my congratulations to Valtteri. He did an exceptional job today and truly deserves it. He was fast all weekend while doing such a good job for the team. He is a fantastic teammate to work with, and it’s an incredible feeling to win your first Grand Prix. \u00bb<\/p>\n
But Hamilton quickly reflects on the cooling issues encountered by his car during the race: “I’ve never had cooling problems like this before, but it meant I was out of the race from the start. I think I had the pace to fight with Kimi, but the car kept overheating. I was easily losing 7 tenths per lap because of that, or even a second.”<\/p>\n
The triple world champion knows, however, that a championship is neither lost nor won after four races. He remains confident for the rest of the championship: “There is still a long way to go, and I am still second in the championship. It’s not the end of the world,” he concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While his team-mate Valtteri Bottas made progress throughout the weekend, culminating in victory on Sunday, Lewis Hamilton struggled all the way with his single-seater, unable to find the right pace or the right solutions to his cooling problems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":38256,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,1749],"tags":[92,841,1491],"class_list":["post-11479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-f1","category-news","tag-bilan","tag-hamilton","tag-sotchi"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n