Formula 1: Interview With Lewis Hamilton
May 11, 2008
McLaren
Question: Lewis, I guess from where you were yesterday, when you weren’t too happy, to split the two Ferraris is a great result for you.
Lewis Hamilton: Absolutely. I am thrilled to have come second from third, but with the strategy we were on as you could tell yesterday I was a little bit disappointed with it. Heikki did a fantastic job and was able to out-qualify me with more fuel. But after looking at the data I realised I was happy with the tyre choice. I lost a little bit of time in my middle sector. Today we started on the harder tyre and knew it was going to be very tough to challenge the Ferraris and to be honest, we were just hoping to get some points. To finish in the top five would have been good. But the balance of the car was great and on the hard tyres I was able to keep up with Felipe and even overtake him. After that I was gone and I was able to keep pushing and pushing. At the end it was quite tough, the softer tyre was definitely the worse tyre but I am much happier.
Question: Do you think your second place is a result of switching to that three stop strategy?
Lewis Hamilton: Perhaps. The reason we went with a three stopper was due to Bridgestone being concerned as they thought the tyre was going to fail like it did last year. Therefore, they made us do a three stop as it was the safest route to go. Unfortunately for us, that put us in not such a strong position to win the race. However, I am given a problem and I deal with it and so do the team and that’s why I still believe that we are the best. I really have to say a big thank you to the team who did a great job in all the pit stops.
Question: Lewis, from your point of move where did that overtaking manoeuvre start? How did it happen for you?
Lewis Hamilton: Probably at the beginning of the lap. I knew that I was catching him and I knew that if I could keep close to him at the beginning of the lap I’d be able to tow him down the back straight. The good thing here is you are able to follow at some of the high speed corners, it is not too bad. I knew that also he was having a bit of traffic, so it was a perfect opportunity for me to get up behind him. So I just had to make sure I capitalised on that. I got a late braking into turn nine and managed to get on the power really early. The car was very nicely balanced but right at the end of the straight they are very quick, so even then once I pulled out of the slipstream he began to pull away again. But nevertheless I was able to outbrake him and pass and pull away. Perhaps if that had happened earlier we could have won the race or if I had done a better job in qualifying we probably would have won the race.
Question: How close was Kimi coming to challenge you at the end?
Lewis Hamilton: At the end of the race we turned the engine down and just looking after the car really. We knew that we had second place. If I needed to go a little bit quicker I could have, but there was no real need as he was never close enough to do anything. I just tried to keep him at bay. I was quite happy with the car on the hard tyres, but on the soft tyres it was a little bit trickier to maintain a decent gap. There was a lot of traffic at the end and I think they did quite a poor job in getting out of the way. I was behind someone for quite a while and although it looks like they were quite far away it does affect the handling of the car. They are not in my race as such, we are not racing us at the front and it made it quite difficult. But nevertheless I got on with it and came home with second.
Question: Lewis, did you say that you thought that that was the best race you’ve run and if so, what makes it that?
Lewis Hamilton: It doesn’t particularly matter whether you win or not, it’s whether you drive at one hundred percent, it’s whether you extract the most out of the car. It’s one of those times when you end the race and you ask yourself and you ask the team, could we have done a better job? And I strongly feel we couldn’t have done a better job. The pit stops were almost perfect, if not perfect, and I think my in laps, my out laps, they were stronger than ever and I just feel my race pace is getting stronger and stronger over the year, at each race. We had a strong showing in Barcelona and even stronger here. And we overtook a Ferrari. Can I just go back to why I think it was my best race. Just another thing: my predicted race finish was fifth. It could have been a lot worst. If I had got a worse start and didn’t get away in second, then I probably would have come sixth or even worse, so with a three stop strategy that no one else had, I think, I just feel we did a fantastic job to bring it back up.
