Lewis Hamilton enjoyed his climb into the points in the second half of the Miami Grand Prix having been disappointed by his qualifying performance.
The Mercedes driver failed to make the cut for Q3 and started yesterday’s race from the seventh row of the grid. However he recovered to finish in sixth place, moving ahead of the Alpine drivers and Charles Leclerc on the way.“It’s been a good day, much better than yesterday,” said Hamilton after the race. “Yesterday was a difficult day in qualifying, to be qualified 13th is not great obviously. It made the whole race much, much harder for us.
“The first 20 laps were a little bit difficult because we were in a DRS train, but after that I was able to then start chipping away and I really enjoyed battling with all the different cars and it was great at the end to be able to catch the Alpine and overtake a Ferrari, for example.”
Hamilton had to make way for his team mate George Russell at one stage, who went on to finish fourth.
“George, he started sixth so we were in bit of a different race and of course I’m a team player, I want to get the team the maximum points so I let him by,” said Hamilton.
The pair have endured a disappointing start to the season as their W14 hasn’t performed as expected. Hamilton said it felt “mega” to be able to recover some points from his lowly qualifying position.
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“The sprint race in the last [round] for example, I was going backwards and it’s just demoralising when you’re going backwards because it’s really tough. So it was great to have pace, be seeing the cars up ahead, seeing the progress and knowing that we were going to be battling with people, and had a couple of great overtakes as well – that’s what I live for.”
Mercedes out-scored Ferrari, despite their rivals showing significantly better pace in qualifying. “It felt great to see the Ferrari up ahead and be just catching it bit by bit,” said Hamilton. “It’s really impressive that they’re so quick on a single lap, but I don’t know what was going on within their race.
“But to come from 13th and then get back into the hustle with them was great. I think if I qualified where I should have probably qualified, I would have had a much easier, smoother day. But I prefer days like this where there’s a bit of adversity and you have to pull it all together and deliver, so great fun to do that.”
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2023 Miami Grand Prix
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Jimmy Cliff
8th May 2023, 10:50
““George, he started sixth so we were in bit of a different race and of course I’m a team player, I want to get the team the maximum points so I let him by,” said Hamilton.”
Well your first reply to the request sounded to be less “team player” and it is not like you had any hope/chance of staying ahead considering Russell was faster on fresher tires and you still had to make a pitstop.
So once again a pretty empty PR statement from Lewis. The day before he blamed the team rather than himself for his Q2 exit in qualifying.
MadMax (@madmax)
9th May 2023, 7:22
you think drivers are reading your comments, or why you directly address them…
Lee1
9th May 2023, 17:17
You mean when he stated that he would let George Past but was not going to back off? I am not sure which part of that is not in the best interests of the team?
Mayrton
8th May 2023, 11:33
To be honest I didn’t see him at all during the race. At the start he got stuck in 13th for a long time, I remember. I had to look up just now where he ended. But 14 to 6 is not bad at all, especially when chewing up a Ferrari in the process. Together with George’s result it shows the car is not that bad.
sethje (@seth-space)
8th May 2023, 12:27
He had some luck with pitstops that broke the drs train he was unable to leave.
After that he seemed to find his self confidence again and started racing.
MadMax (@madmax)
9th May 2023, 7:24
Good drivers can catch up, also when not having a superior car. And the hard – medium strategy was also better this time.
x303 (@x303)
8th May 2023, 21:35
Absolutely: Mercedes is catching and will probably pass Aston Martin despite having a (slightly) slower car, thqt’s down to their driver lineup.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
9th May 2023, 17:58
Yes, hamilton and russell are definitely closer to the top, stroll is way further behind to alonso.
Andy (@andyfromsandy)
8th May 2023, 11:59
The television coverage I believe is what is called the world feed so is the same for every-one and in general I think it poor.
Looking at the time intervals between the cars it looked like Charles was coming back at Lewis but none of that got shown.
There just seems to be plenty of close calls in the race but as most to none get shown it looks to be a boring race.
They showed the slow motion shots and overtakes from a couple of drivers two or three times FFS!
Edvaldo
8th May 2023, 16:04
I was looking at that too, but it think it was a glitch. It was blinking and changing back and forth from a gap of 0.8s to 1.7s and he finished 1.7 behind.
Lee Fear1
9th May 2023, 17:19
Yep there was some strange glitching which showed some times that were clearly wrong for brief periods.
Michael (@freelittlebirds)
8th May 2023, 12:55
It looked really dire for Hamilton at the start but he was able to climb through the field. P6 was very impressive given the start, especially after starting P13. If he had more laps, he may have been able to get within 5 seconds of Sainz.
Wayne
9th May 2023, 8:42
5fth and 6th is where their cars are more or less. Well done to both for achieving their full potential. Once again redbull seemed to favor max over Perez. Updating max 100 tyms more than they did perez.