In an attempt to defeat Lando Norris and Max Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton, who qualified third and George Russell, fourth in the Spanish Grand Prix, has turned to his Mercedes teammate for assistance.
In an attempt to surpass their competitors at the forthcoming Spanish Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton has publicly urged George Russell, his teammate, to work together.
This appeal follows a heated exchange during the last qualifying round in Barcelona, where Russell used a heated radio remark to vent his frustration over Hamilton’s track behavior.
“What the f*** was Lewis doing, prepping that lap?” Russell asked in a fit of rage. He was told to focus on the task at hand by his race engineer, who responded, “We’ll talk about it afterwards, head in the game.”
Following this advice, Russell qualified for the starting grid in fourth place, but Hamilton took third place, barely beating Russell.This is just the second time this season that Hamilton has outqualified Russell.
Given that Lando Norris and current points leader Max Verstappen are leading, Hamilton is confident that working together with Russell will be essential to catching the top McLaren and Red Bull cars.
“Position is everything, so I think… also, there are two of us, so hopefully we can apply pressure as a team to both of the cars ahead in order to play out something in strategy and slowly climb up,” Hamilton said when outlining his plan. We won’t know until we get into that first run because it all depends on degradation tomorrow and how you take care of the tires.”
Hamilton hinted that Mercedes is getting closer to the front-runners as he expressed his pure happiness at earning his best qualifying position of the year. “This is another encouraging result for us as a team,” he beamingly said. Over the course of the season thus far, everyone has been putting in a great deal of effort to update and improve the car.
“It is really important to us that we are beginning to become more consistent. That is a result of each team member working extra hours, and for that, I am really grateful. Driving the car is becoming more fun. The difference today was three tenths, but since we didn’t get everything out of the car on the final lap, I believe it was actually less.
“My goal for tomorrow is to try to fight for the victory. With a long run down to turn one, we are off to a good start. Tomorrow, degradation will also be crucial, and our practice runs appeared to be strong in that regard. I’m hoping that holds true on Sunday so we can enjoy a pleasant afternoon together.”
Russell, though, thought they could have accomplished more. “A second-row lockout is a decent result, but we were a little bit off in our estimate on the gap to Norris and Verstappen,” he said. Lewis and I both recorded strong lap times, but I don’t think we maximized them. It’s really hard to get the tires precisely in the window on a demanding course like this one. Perhaps we didn’t accomplish that today, but I believe those who came before us did.”
