Hamilton learned a lot from Verstappen: 'I can pass that on to my team'

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Hamilton learned a lot from Verstappen in united states sprint
22 October at 00:30
Last update 22 October at 00:47
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  • Olly Darcy
  • Editor

Lewis Hamilton managed to keep up nicely with Max Verstappen's pace in the opening phase of the Formula 1 sprint race at the Circuit of the Americas. That was particularly instructive, the Mercedes driver said after the sprint.

Hamilton learned a lot from Verstappen

At the start, Hamilton got away well and took advantage of the battle between Verstappen and Charles Leclerc for the race lead. Once on P2, he kept Verstappen in his sights for laps, which the Mercedes driver sees as a learning experience.

"The car was feeling pretty good, so I was just attacking from the get-go and trying to get as close as I could. But whilst the car felt like that, I just couldn't bridge the gap enough to Max, and then once I was out his DRS, he just started eating away and cruising." Hamilton began.

He continued: "It was a good position to be able to watch what the Red Bull’s car and what Max's car was doing and how it's behaving. So I got to watch for a while and see where they are particularly strong, which we can obviously see that from GPS or something like that, but it helps to know where we are and if there's anywhere we're stronger and where we are weaker, so I can download that and share that to my team."

So what exactly did he learn from his time behind Verstappen? "That we have a lot of work to do, everyone behind these guys have a lot of work to do. It's no small feat for us to truly catch them for next year. They will be progressing at a steep rate as they've got an amazing development team, and to make it even steeper for us to be able to close that gap. I’m going put a hundred percent faith in my team that we can do it," Hamilton said.