“Definitely wasn’t expecting that” Lewis Hamilton ecstatic with P3 in Austria
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Lewis Hamilton
Lewis Hamilton has had better fortunes in the last 3 races than the rest of the season. Austria marks his third consecutive podium (third-placed) finish in a row. It hadn’t been an ideal weekend for Mercedes and Hamilton, as both drivers had crashed out in Friday qualifying. In the sprint, Lewis Hamilton was stuck behind Mick Schumacher for a few laps, and as a result, started 8th in the Grand Prix.
A timely virtual safety car and Carlos Sainz’s retirement certainly helped Mercedes. Hamilton had been running 4th, and Russell 7th when Carlos Sainz retired from the race with an engine failure. Despite this, the Mercedes did not look anywhere near the pace of Ferrari and Red Bull, and Hamilton finished 41 seconds behind Charles Leclerc.
Mercedes’ pristine reliability means that in a lot of races this season they have been able to snatch they perhaps did not deserve on raw pace, but reliability is also an important part of a Formula 1 car and season. Silverstone and Spain have been the best two races for the team this season at least on pace, with Lewis Hamilton genuinely looking like a frontrunner in Britain, and even in Austria, they seemed to be in the fight for pole position.
Lewis Hamilton praises Mercedes for his car’s repair work
As reported by GPBlog, in a post-race interview, Lewis Hamilton expressed his delight at the ‘unexpected’ result, saying: “Definitely wasn’t expecting that, yesterday was a difficult day and we have had a bit of a rough weekend. Thank you so much and what an incredible crowd we have had here this weekend.”
His qualifying crash on Friday had left his engineers with a task ahead of them to repair the car before the sprint race on Saturday. Hamilton is very grateful for the Mercedes staff, and thanked them for giving him a ‘brand new’ car: “Firstly, I do want to say a really big thank you to the men and women in the garage who worked so hard to rebuild the car. I had a brand new car on Saturday morning and unfortunately, it is something I don’t do too often.”
And for the result, Hamilton said: “As a team we got 3rd and 4th which is great points and we move forward from here.” the next race is the French Grand Prix at the Circuit Paul Ricard. Hamilton had won the first two editions of the race at the current circuit, and it remains to be seen if Mercedes can have another good weekend in France.
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Aniket Tripathi
(1002 Articles Published)