Lewis Hamilton defied all predictions to claim second place on the grid for the season opening Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne. The 2008 world champion gave a customary gritty display to split the Red Bulls and also fire a warning to rivals that McLaren are never to be written off. A couple of weeks ago predictions of doom and gloom for the Woking squad prevailed, today they have shown themselves as contenders.
Eight-tenths off Sebastian [Vettel] is a lot but after the very poor winter testing you had I bet you couldn’t even dream you’d be sitting on the front row for the first grand prix.
Lewis Hamilton: Absolutely. I’m absolutely thrilled to be up here today. The guys back at the factory have done an unbelievable job. Really a massive step this weekend. The car is feeling fantastic. Of course, we still have a lot of work to do but I think we have really got ourselves on the right track and a great foundation for us to build upon. I know the guys back at the factory will keep going but a big thank you to everyone at home. Keep pushing.
A phenomenal effort by the guys to transform what was a difficult car into a front row car?
Lewis: Absolutely fantastic and superb effort from the guys back at the factory. It was a very brave and tough decision for us to kind of pull back from what we had been developing over the winter test and after the last test to decide ‘okay, we are going to come back in another direction’. I think since I have been here we have never ever done that before but the results from the wind tunnel looked good and the guys worked harder than they have ever pushed before to get the components here and the car feels a huge improvement for us and a great stepping stone for us. A great foundation for us to really push on. I know we have got some good things in the pipeline from this base where we are but, of course, the gap. If he didn’t use KERS, that is another half-a-second so that is 1.3 seconds, which is not normal.
You talked about that margin. Are we going to see that margin eroded and how soon do you think you can do that as, obviously, the pace of development is massive?
Lewis: It is, yeah. We, as a team, have good development rate. I think over the years you have seen us come from quite far back and be able to develop a little bit faster than some others. At least we are in the fight and from there we can score good points, continue to work on our reliability and, of course, closing the gap is going to be very tough. It is a big gap still, but the car feels fantastic so I can’t even imagine what he (Vettel) feels like round the corners.
You were shaking your head when we were talking about KERS. Is that because you didn’t use it or were thinking ‘wow, without it’.
Lewis: No, I used it for half my lap and I ran out towards the end of the lap. I didn’t have any more. No, I had probably, like, 40 per cent still left. That is a little bit of time but nothing which would get me close enough to them. That is a staggering lap time they did, so well done to Sebastian but like I said I’ll catch you up.
One week ago you were saying that you had a car that was far from being a winning car and a week later you come up with a very fast car which could be a winning car, so what happened? I don’t understand.
Lewis: Well, I was never saying that the car was bad, it already felt better than last year’s car. It was just lacking downforce. What downforce enables you to do is brake later, to attack the corners faster, to get on the power earlier so in improving your downforce you improve your minimum speed, so you can improve your kilometres per hour through each corner by ten kilometres. That’s a lot of time, because you carry that all the way down the straights. So we’ve improved the rear end of the car which means that I’m able to attack corners a lot more, massively faster in the higher speed corners and so we’ve basically just fixed an area of the car which was lacking and it clearly shows, this weekend, that by fixing that one part, the rest of the car is working quite well around it. But we still have a lot of work to do, but it’s really due to a fantastic job by the guys back at the factory.
Are you surprised by Ferrari’s performance?
Lewis: Yeah, I think they’ve got a great car. I find these tyres very easy to use, and obviously these guys have found them quite easy to use, but I guess some people down the field have not really been able to switch them on how they would like but this is very early, we’re all learning as we go along. At the end of the testing, it was obvious that they (Red Bull) were the fastest, they were the championship winners the previous year, they were the fastest and won the last race, so clearly, rolling into next year, they were going to be the most competitive, so it was no surprise that they were the quickest this weekend. I would have thought that Ferrari would have been a bit closer to us but I think, again, it’s just the tyres. Maybe if they got the tyres working they would be able to close the gap.
Source: YallaF1
