“I learned a lot about his car and how he uses it”– Lewis Hamilton on his rival Max Verstappen

“I learned a lot about his car and how he uses it”– Lewis Hamilton talks about how he learnt a couple of things about Max Verstappen.

Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen had a thrilling encounter in Spain, only for the seven-time world champion to scoop away the win from the hands of the Dutch race driver.

Though, Hamilton has confessed that his deep observations about Verstappen made him learn a couple of things about his rival, which aided him in his Sunday win.

“When you are with people on track you get to see different things and watch closely and obviously I was following relatively closely and I learned a lot about his car and how he uses it, so it was a good race in that respect,” he said.

After the win, Hamilton flaunts a 14 point gap lead over Verstappen, and this is by far the best career start by both the race drivers, as Hamilton stands top with 94 points and Verstappen 80 after the first four races.

Pressure on Sergio Perez

On Sunday, Mercedes’ duo easily managed to bully Verstappen and push him till the brink, where his medium-hard compound tyres overworked and were of no use against the fresher tyres used by Hamilton, which he brought in with amazing tyre management call.

Though things could have been different if Sergio Perez could have pressurized the Mercedes cars, the Mexican was himself struggling at the P5 so that he couldn’t be of much help to Verstappen.

However, at the same time, patience is also required with Perez, as none of the drivers with the new teams has managed to perform decently so far, as none of them got time and mileage to settle.

Therefore, Perez needs a few more races to finally get used to the whole setup and challenge Mercedes for the title.

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

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