“I don’t understand where they get it from”– Lewis Hamilton is baffled by Red Bull’s two-tenths advantage over Mercedes in qualifying.
Red Bull in the past few races have managed to get a better qualifying time against Mercedes, which has apparently grabbed Lewis Hamilton‘s attention.
The extraordinary pace by Red Bull has propelled the Briton to ask his teammates to detail him about the massive gap between the two teams on single-lap pace and reminds him of his own team’s qualifying mode.
“I already know that but I think we have made some small progress. I think they still have two tenths or maybe it is a tenth and a half, something like that. We can definitely take some small steps forward but not enough to close that two tenths,” he said.
“Over a single lap, that felt pretty good, I just expect them to turn up a little bit more tomorrow. They have almost basically got the qualifying mode that we used to have.”
“I asked my guys… I don’t understand where they get it from. It is impressive and we have got to work hard to see if we can match it somehow.”
FP1 was a struggle
Hamilton had an underwhelming day at work on Friday, as his new variants didn’t work during FP1, so he had to track back to his previous strategy. However, overall, he is happy about his team’s current situation.
“In FP1 it was a struggle because I was trying different variants of the car and I wasn’t happy. So I had to make some more changes back to similar to what I had last week with some other adjustments and it felt much better. I am generally happy with where the car is.”
“I am probably not going to change too much because most often if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Most of the time you try to eke out more and it gets worse so I will make the tiniest of tweaks.”