Lewis Hamilton says he is confident he will be able to get better results by turning his first Ferrari podium in Hungary after a comeback drive at the Belgian Grand Prix.
Ferrari brought new rear suspension to Spa Franco Champ, but Hamilton had two early exits in both the sprint that began in the pit lane on Sunday and in the regular qualifying round. In his impressive first stint, Hamilton says he pulled out many overtakes with the wet, then moved the pit stop to seventh place perfectly at the right time, and unlocked the way to get better performance from the upgraded car by the weekend.
“Everyone on the team worked so hard,” Hamilton said. “We obviously had these upgrades. Everybody who came back to the factory worked so hard, and when I posted performances like I had in the last two days, it’s difficult because the team isn’t worthy of it.
“It wasn’t a case of not necessarily coming in and not being in the right mind all weekend. I was the only one on Friday-Saturday, especially, but I recovered.
“So I got some points. We outperformed Mercedes in points. That’s great. Charles (Leclerc) did a great job. Obviously, the car is improving as Charles managed to hold onto another podium.
“I think this (racing) is definitely something that’s going to be behind me. I’m sure I’m confident I’ll move on from here. I’ve learned more about today’s car so I’ll tweak it, go next week and go to the factory on Wednesday.
The rainy weather setup helped Hamilton’s early accusations, but he also explains how other components introduced in recent races (including alterations to the rear brakes) played a role in his struggle.
“It’s obviously coming back from there, I’m clearly a big challenge. But I made some changes overnight. With so many upgrades in the build up up to this week, there are basically two elements. One of those elements was tested in Montreal.
“For me, it was the first time I’d used it, but it was the spin that caught me because there was no setting.
“Also, engineer changes. So we were basically at a deep end. I think we did a really good job all night to correct some of those (problems) – we tweaked it and tweaked it.
The engineering change is related to someone who works with both Hamilton and his existing race engineer, Riccard Adami, who is still heard on Ferrari Driver’s team radio throughout the weekend.
“It’s not easy to switch engineers in the middle of the season, but I’ve known for years that I actually had with my previous team, but I wasn’t in that position.