F1 | Monaco GP | Lewis Hamilton a lowly 8th: "It’s worse than we anticipated"
Lewis Hamilton’s comments about qualifying and the performance of his car. The Mercedes driver’s positions on budget cup and 2023 F1 calendar.
Lewis Hamilton secured himself an eighth place on the grid today in qualifying for tomorrow's start. Surely it wasn't what the Mercedes driver and his team aspired to but the red flag, caused by the Red Bull driver Sergio Perez, put an end to the hopes of trying to do another lap to improve and beat teammate Russel.
“I think it wasn’t looking too bad before that, this sort of thing, it is what it is,” Hamilton comments in post-qualifying interviews at the microphones of MotorLAT and other media outlets.
The English driver doesn't seem to be very happy with the performance of the car today. Since the beginning of the weekend he has had several problems with excessive bouncing and pace still doesn't seem entirely good.
“I think it’s worse than we anticipated here; it’s super bouncy probably for us everywhere: slow, medium and high (speed). Challenging.
"Today it felt better but we seem to be slower, I don’t know really why. I felt we improved the car in terms of bouncing, but we were slower.”
Given the condition of his car, Hamilton hopes for the rain, that could somehow benefit their performance during tomorrow’s race: “I’m not doing any [rain] dancing, but I do want it to rain, gonna make it a little bit better than drive around in the dry in eighth place.”
“You can't overtake here. I’m hoping that the weather plays up and gives opportunity. Maybe we can do different strategies. It would be nice to have some luck for once.”
Over the weekend there seem to be two topics of discussion in the paddock: the increase of budget cup and the proposal of a calendar of 24 races that would lead to the possible exit of some historical tracks, among which Monaco.
Regarding this Hamilton commented: “I’d be sad to lose this one. I think it’s an epic weekend, an iconic race. The actual race itself isn’t the most exciting race because you can't overtake.
"But I feel like as a spectacle it’s one of the best ones of the year. I do feel like it would be cool if we could do some changes someday... I don’t know what they can do but we could definitely make this weekend even more exciting than it is probably.”
