Lewis Hamilton said he may have sacrificed too much of his car’s qualifying performance to improve its race pace after taking ninth on the grid for the Bahrain Grand Prix.
He headed second practice yesterday ahead of his team mate. But while George Russell took third on the grid, Hamilton will line up on row five.
“I think George’s position and the pace that George showed today is a real testament to the team, just how hard everyone’s worked through the winter,” he told Sky. “It’s amazing for us to have a car that we can fight with. It just really lights the fire and the flame within us drivers.
“For me, [race engineer] Bono and everyone did a great job. I just struggled with it in qualifying. Just in general today.
“Yesterday it was really good, George and I were on the same set-ups and then he went left and I went right and I think right was definitely not good for a single lap, but I felt more comfortable with more fuel, so I hope that reflects tomorrow.”
He said he “definitely sacrificed more than I hoped to” with his set-up “but I hope that it pays off tomorrow.
“We’ll see. It’s a lot of work to do to get past all those quick cars ahead of me. But it’ll be fun.”
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Just 0.225 seconds separated Russell in third from Hamilton in ninth. Team principal Toto Wolff said Hamilton’s lower starting position was a matter of “tiny margins”.
“You get the tyre in the optimum window, it’s just two-tenths the difference, and then you’re right in the game,” he said.
However he admitted the team expected more following their strong showing in practice.
“I think the P3 is okay. We thought we had a little bit more pace, we were three-tenths off pole. Yesterday it looked better, but we put the car in a sweet spot for tomorrow’s race, at least this is what we hope.”
“I think the set-up changes that we made, they contributed to this performance today,” he continued. “At the beginning of qualifying, we thought maybe we’ve taken too much performance off, sacrificed for tomorrow’s race. But then at the end we got it quite okay with George.
“Tomorrow should be better but we are still learning about this car.”
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2024 Bahrain Grand Prix
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