Lewis Hamilton is frustrated after the Formula 1 race in Baku because he was never really able to compete, had tyre problems and had to let his rivals pull away
Lewis Hamilton doesn’t mince his words after finishing sixth in the Formula 1 race in Baku: “From my point of view, that was a pretty bad race,” says the seven-time world champion. “I mean, I just couldn’t make any headway at all. I couldn’t keep up with the lads further ahead and struggled to keep the cars behind me at bay.”
The problem at Ferrari: “We simply lacked pace today,” criticises Hamilton, who, despite two safety car periods, finished almost eight seconds behind Kimi Antonelli, who had started the race from 16th on the grid.
From the Scuderia’s perspective, there was no beating the Mercedes in Azerbaijan, and the Reds were also unable to keep up with Red Bull on Saturday. Of the top teams, only McLaren could be beaten, though even that was down to a mistake by Oscar Piastri, who had been running in second place for a long time before his crash at Turn 1.
So is Ferrari now merely the fourth-strongest force? “What difference does that make?”, Hamilton dismisses the suggestion. “Why should I agree with that? I don’t know if we’re third or second; I just don’t know. We’re obviously not the second-fastest team at the moment. But we were ahead of McLaren today, so perhaps we’re third.”
Tyres a problem all weekend
Hamilton’s biggest headache at the Baku race, however, was the Pirelli tyres, which he managed to get into the working window far too rarely. “I don’t think I ever really got the tyres to work. And I can’t quite put my finger on why that’s the case with our car,” says the Briton, who struggled with them all weekend.
” “We made a few changes to try and sort it out,” he says. “It was a bit better in the third practice session. In qualifying, it was a real struggle to get them working. I think a lot of people had this problem, but others seemed to struggle less.”
“And in the race, it was exactly the same,” he says. Although he kept weaving from side to side, the tyres simply wouldn’t settle into the right temperature range. Only once, at the end of the first stint, were the tyres at the right temperature.
“Suddenly I was setting the same lap times as everyone in front of me – or at least as a few of the lads further up the field,” said Hamilton. “And then we switched to the next set of tyres, and they just wouldn’t come to life for the entire final stint of the race, so I was just skidding about.”
Will things be better in Malaysia?
The Englishman is also struggling with the power delivery of his Ferrari engine: “The lads just seemed to have power, power, power everywhere,” he said, marvelling at the competition. “ It’s quite mad to see that you have to defend in places where you normally wouldn’t have to – like at Turn 2, Turn 4 or Turn 5.”
Generally speaking, however, Hamilton found himself “in no man’s land for most of the time”, resulting in an unspectacular sixth place finish.
For the upcoming weekend in Malaysia (sorry, “Bahrain”), however, Hamilton expects things to improve somewhat – at least as far as the tyres are concerned. This is because significantly hotter temperatures are forecast for Sepang, and there are also many long, fast corners there.
“ “So I reckon getting the tyres up to temperature won’t be a problem there; it’ll be more a case of them overheating,” he says. “So maybe we’ll be in a better position there – I don’t know. There are plenty of straights, so we’ll just have to go back to the drawing board and try to work out if we can squeeze anything more out of the package we’ve got.”