05/11/2024
NEWS STORY
Lewis Hamilton admits that a holiday... Christmas... anything will do after a "terrible" weekend in the "worst car" he has ever driven.
The very fact that the seven-time world champion leaves Brazil - a Sprint weekend - just one point better off, probably tells you all you need to know. But Hamilton believes that even that single point flatters to deceive.
"Yesterday was terrible, today was terrible," he said of Saturday's Sprint. "Yesterday was bad, qualifying was bad, the Sprint race was bad. The car's just been bad all weekend," he added.
Despite the resurfacing of the Interlagos track it remains very bumpy and while a number of drivers complained, Hamilton and Fernando Alonso were among those most affected, bith admitting to suffering pain.
However, for Hamilton, even more painful was the performance of his car.
"I just put my focus on something else," said the Briton, who admits to longing for the end of the season. "I'm not fighting for the championship, it doesn't really matter where we finish in the championship.
"I don't care if I finish ahead of George or behind George, it doesn't make that big of a difference to me. I just want to keep the car out the wall and try to score points if I can for the team.
"If I can finish well and they give me a car that doesn't bounce off the track in the next few races, then hopefully we get a better result. I'm looking forward to Christmas."
The one crumb of comfort for the Mercedes driver was that he got to drive a McLaren... albeit a 34-year-old one... being Ayrton Senna's 1990 MP4/5B.
"Well the race was c**p, but driving Senna's car was the best thing ever," he grinned. "So, I'm still happy and grateful that I had that experience here in Interlagos.
"An amazing reception from the fans," he added. "They've been incredible this weekend. They turned up, I think, at 3 am this morning. So, unbelievable commitment from the fans here this weekend.
"Let's not talk about the car," he said of his Mercedes, "because you know the car is no good."
For teammate George Russell it wasn't the car so much as the strategy that frustrated, for like Lando Norris he pitted for fresh rubber just before the race was red-flagged. However, even without the stoppage Russell believed he should have stayed out longer.
"Very painful all things considered," said Russell at race end, "not much I want to say really.
"It was 'box'. I said 'stay out'," he recalled. "It was 'box' again, it was 'stay out', I said. And they said 'box' again. As I said, 'I want to stay out'. And then the last one, you've got to go for it...
"Sometimes you have to trust your gut," he added. "Last time I trusted my gut it went down pretty well," he said, referring to the Belgian Grand Prix. "Today, who knows if we could have won the race? But if we didn't pit, we would have been leading at the restart and the first 30 laps controlling the pace.
"With Lando behind us, we had very good straight-line speed as well. P2 would have been a minimum."
Being at the coal-face, Russell believes that a driver has the best insight in terms of conditions.
"From a team's perspective, it's not obvious at all," he said. "From the cockpit, it was very clear it was going to be a red flag or safety car, because the conditions were undriveable. The rain was not easing. I could see the big black cloud above me.
"And then I had Shov jump on as, like, overruling my engineer to say 'box'. We're working as a team, we're trying to make the best decisions in the time. Clearly the guys who didn't pit, they finished 1-2-3 and we finished the highest of the drivers who did. So I would take a small slice of satisfaction from that."
Check out our Sunday gallery from Sao Paulo here.