General
Hamilton concedes half second on Verstappen: 'Couldn't make up for it'
- Toby McLuskie
Lewis Hamilton drove the new W14 for the first time on Friday and the feeling was good. What it can bring him in Monaco is difficult for the Mercedes driver to say, but in any case he is in awe of how hard everyone within the German racing stable has worked to make the updates happen.
During a Mercedes press briefing in Monaco, Hamilton said, "I want to say a big, big thank you to everyone back in the factory because to build, design and develop a car is not an easy thing and everyone's put so much time, so many hours of hard work, to have us here today" Both Hamilton and teammate George Russell managed to keep their bolide out of the walls in the narrow streets of Monaco. "I'm glad that we were able to keep it on track for them and I think we got a lot of data."
The Monaco circuit is a-typical, which makes it difficult to test updates, but at least Hamilton goes into the rest of the weekend feeling fine. "It's not the place to ultimately test an upgrade, but the car was generally feeling good."
How good is Mercedes in Monaco?
In the first free practice, Hamilton finished third, a few hours later he had to make do with sixth. "In FP1, I thought, 'well, maybe we're looking pretty good' but we're always looking pretty good in FP1 for some reason. In this session [FP2] we're close to half a second off, I think maybe that could have been three tenths maybe, but I don't think we have half of a second in the in the bag, so we'll see."