Lewis Hamilton says Mercedes has identified tyre usage as an area it needs to improve on with its car, after losing out to Sebastian Vettel at the Australian Grand Prix.
Hamilton had started the F1 2017 opener on pole, but couldn't pull away from Vettel in the first stint of the race – and eventually had to come in early as he had "run out of grip" on his set of ultrasofts.
He lost time stuck behind Max Verstappen after stopping, while Vettel stuck with his ultrasofts for six laps longer and leapfrogged Hamilton as a result, going on to win the race.
Having radioed in that he was lacking grip at several points during the race, Hamilton explained afterwards: "The team asked me to give information where the tyres are throughout the run – and just the race that we had planned to race and I was asked to race wasn't necessarily the optimum.
"We didn't firstly have the pace to be able to pull a gap, for example, to Sebastian, we knew that early on. We continued on this road, which just didn't end up working out.
"There's an area that we have to work on, obviously our tyre usage is something [that] we understand is where we're losing . So we're just trying to make changes to improve that in the future, which we will do."
"Could have done better"
Responding to suggestions that he didn't seem overly unhappy to have missed out on the win, Hamilton said that his disappointment was tempered by the fact Mercedes has remained a victory contender through the 2017 regulation change.
"Wouldn't say I'm happy," he said. "I mean, you could, realistically, with all things in perspective, see we've come from to massive rule change - to see us come here and be battling so closely for a win and missing out marginally, I think there's a lot of things to be incredibly proud of.
"It's great to see Ferrari up there, I think it's good for the sport that we have this close battle.
"I could've won the race today and there's certain things that we could've perhaps done better but I gave it everything I could. Can't win them all."
Asked to elaborate what, aside from tyre usage, those "certain things" were, Hamilton said: "I can't really tell you. There's so many things - it's all internal stuff that we have to work on. It's a bunch of things - how hard you push, the balance, there's so many things."
Hamilton had started the F1 2017 opener on pole, but couldn't pull away from Vettel in the first stint of the race – and eventually had to come in early as he had "run out of grip" on his set of ultrasofts.
He lost time stuck behind Max Verstappen after stopping, while Vettel stuck with his ultrasofts for six laps longer and leapfrogged Hamilton as a result, going on to win the race.
Having radioed in that he was lacking grip at several points during the race, Hamilton explained afterwards: "The team asked me to give information where the tyres are throughout the run – and just the race that we had planned to race and I was asked to race wasn't necessarily the optimum.
"We didn't firstly have the pace to be able to pull a gap, for example, to Sebastian, we knew that early on. We continued on this road, which just didn't end up working out.
"There's an area that we have to work on, obviously our tyre usage is something [that] we understand is where we're losing . So we're just trying to make changes to improve that in the future, which we will do."
"Could have done better"
Responding to suggestions that he didn't seem overly unhappy to have missed out on the win, Hamilton said that his disappointment was tempered by the fact Mercedes has remained a victory contender through the 2017 regulation change.
"Wouldn't say I'm happy," he said. "I mean, you could, realistically, with all things in perspective, see we've come from to massive rule change - to see us come here and be battling so closely for a win and missing out marginally, I think there's a lot of things to be incredibly proud of.
"It's great to see Ferrari up there, I think it's good for the sport that we have this close battle.
"I could've won the race today and there's certain things that we could've perhaps done better but I gave it everything I could. Can't win them all."
Asked to elaborate what, aside from tyre usage, those "certain things" were, Hamilton said: "I can't really tell you. There's so many things - it's all internal stuff that we have to work on. It's a bunch of things - how hard you push, the balance, there's so many things."
No comments:
Post a Comment