Hamilton concerned: "Red Bull clearly have the stronger car"
F1 News
Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes had a party on Saturday when they locked out the front row of the grid, but the Brit and Valtteri Bottas failed to create a successful plan to keep Max Verstappen behind at the first corner. Verstappen went around the outside and braked later to storm into the lead.
From there, Verstappen created a significant gap and Hamilton was unable to challenge for the rest of the race. The Dutchman's lead grows to 19 points with just four races remaining in Brazil, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi. Hamilton knows all he can do is to keep pushing and see where he ends up in December.
"Started second and finish second. So, I can't complain. Got a really good start and I feel like a maximised everything I had but just their pace was unbelievable today. Nothing I could do to battle that. We have four races to go and we just have to keep pushing. If they have this performance I don't know where this performance has come from today but they were half a second quicker than us on a lap, which is what we saw earlier this week," Hamilton said in an interview on Sky Sports.
"All I can do is keep squeezing everything out of this car. They clearly have the stronger car so I think all I can do is make sure that we don't leave any stone unturned and maximise what we have and give it my all."
Sergio Perez
In a similar style to Hamilton chase on Verstappen in the United States, Perez hunted down the seven-time World Champion. Checo got within DRS range but couldn't make the overtake work in front of his home fans. Hamilton notes this.
"When you have Checo on your tail then you know the car is quick. I think they just made a mistake in qualifying to be honest because we didn't get any faster. They just messed it up with the tyres or something," Hamilton added.