“We’ve got to try and capitalise on that”– Lewis Hamilton agrees Max Verstappen’s engine grid penalty is a golden opportunity for him in championship battle

Tanish Chachra | 24/09/2021
"We’ve got to try and capitalise on that"– Lewis Hamilton agrees Max Verstappen's engine grid penalty is a golden opportunity for him in championship battle

“We’ve got to try and capitalize on that”– Lewis Hamilton agrees that Mercedes should fully use Max Verstappen’s engine grid penalty.

On Friday, it was announced by Red Bull that they would be installing a new engine in Max Verstappen’s car, which will enforce a grid penalty on him taking the Dutchman at the end of the grid for the race start.

Viewed it as an advantage to Lewis Hamilton, the Briton has confessed that it is a golden opportunity, and it should be maximized to elevate his chances to win the championship.

“We’ve just got to do our thing and focus,” he said. “It’s a tough year, I think, for everyone with reliability. That’s definitely a shame for him. But we’ve got to try and capitalize on that, get a maximum result. A one-two would be spectacular for us as a team.”

Encouraging Friday

Hamilton is delighted with Mercedes work on Friday, where they pair dominated the grid in both practice sessions. Hamilton also revealed that the duo is running on the track with different setups.

“The first run in the first session was the best. We’ve been migrating and adjusting since and it’s not been as good as that one as you start to push more and more, I guess. But generally a good session pace-wise. We’ve got some work [to do] probably on the long run.”

A heavy amount of rain is predicted on Saturday, which might even postpone the qualifying for Sunday; Hamilton thinks it is interesting to see how the events unfold.

“Tomorrow it’s going to be raining a lot, we heard. It’s going to be a big wet day tomorrow. It’ll be interesting to see what we do in terms of setup for that, knowing that potentially Sunday is dry,” he said.

Post Edited By: Tanish Chachra
Lewis Hamilton Mercedes

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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