Hamilton dusts off after win: 'Will give everything for qualifying'
F1 News
Lewis Hamilton has won his first race for Ferrari in what was a challenging sprint in China. However, the Briton doesn't get caught up in his early success and looks to keep the momentum going for the qualifying session later on, where he suspects Lando Norris will come back with full force.
"I got in the car extra early because I just wanted to be present and enjoy it because I hadn't been there for a while," said Hamilton during the post sprint press conference, before outlining the challenges that presented throughout the race. "[I had a] good start, challenging race. I think it is generally really close between all of us [the teams]. The tyre degradation today was pretty pretty huge I think for everybody. So I think for me it was just trying to manage that early on."
Hamilton sees win as a stepping stone toward further success in red
However, in the last part of the race the Briton managed to build a rather comfortable gap ahead of his pursuers, Oscar Piastri and Max Verstappen. "The last five laps or something, I was in a really pretty comfortable position. So, it's hard to put into words what it feels like to... Obviously it's a sprint race, it's not the main race, but even just to get... that's just a good stepping stone to where I'm working towards."
"The car was feeling really good today so I'm definitely, I think hopefully we'll make a couple more changes to improve the car going into qualifying this afternoon and we won't change too much so that we've got a pretty decent platform so far," adds the seven-time world champion, who despite feeling comfortable in his SF-25, is aware of the tough battle that awaits him during the qualifying session later this afternoon.
"Definitely feeling good, but as you saw yesterday, qualifying was incredibly close between the top three and I don't think Lando got his lap, so it'll be very difficult again this afternoon, but we'll give it absolutely everything," concluded Hamilton