F1 | Hamilton happy with performance on testing even though he says Mercedes has "had some obstacles to overcome"
Lewis Hamilton debriefs his Friday session as he goes fastest for Mercedes on the final day of action at the circuit of Montmeló.
The first pre-session testing at Barcelona prior to the 2022 F1 season has come to an end after an eventful third day of action at the circuit of Montmeló and Lewis Hamilton topped the timesheets for the final time this week when he scored a fastest 1:19.138 lap.
The Briton spoke to the media after driving the W13 at the evening shift in a day that was full of red flags and incidents, as he declared happy with the development and performance the World Champion Team had in the past three days.
“It's been an interesting few days. It’s not been the easiest, or the most smooth running. We've definitely had some obstacles to overcome. But we've got through as much as we wanted – of course we can always do more laps but I'm happy with today's. I think I almost got 100 laps in today, so for half a day running, that's not too bad.”
“We're a little bit behind on the last two days. The car's a lot different to previous years to drive, as are the tyres, but we're working our way through it.”
— Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team (@MercedesAMGF1) February 25, 2022
As the 7-time World Champion habituates, he didn’t miss the chance to thank all the hard work his team does like it is in the circuit at Catalunya as in Brackley in the UK.
“The whole team have done an amazing job this week. The men and women back at the factory have done an awesome job, so we just need to download all this data and just get through as much as we can next week and just put one foot in front of the other.”
The 37-year-old debriefed his session on Friday evening at Barcelona saying: “It wasn’t a good start of the session with all that wet running, but the car was definitely feeling better with the fresher tyres and it’s good to get a good feel for the different commands.”
Compared to how his Briton teammate said yesterday that Mercedes was behind McLaren and Ferrari at the moment, Hamilton took it easy and assured that, even though tests are important, you can’t pay much attention to the data showing who’s faster or who’s not.
“You never do [find out the pecking order] on the first week,” he said. “You never do. We have no idea where everyone is.”
The silver cars top the table on our final day of running in Barcelona 🤝#F1 pic.twitter.com/xWvoAlYroz
— Formula 1 (@F1) February 25, 2022
