Windsor disregards Hamilton start-up problems: 'Already looking like his old self'

After the sudden return of Lewis Hamilton on the Abu Dhabi grid, today all eyes were on the performance of the Brit in the first and second free practice session. After having been sick with coronavirus, which forced him to miss the GP at Sakhir, the question was whether Hamilton would have any start-up problems due to his absence and George Russell's runs in his car. In any case, Peter Windsor does not think so.

On his youtube channel, Formula 1 expert Peter Windsor gives his analysis of the two free practice sessions, noting that Lewis Hamilton performs as well as he did before his coronavirus infection. "He looked good in the car, he looked just like the old Lewis. I think already it’s kind of back to normal, with George Russell back at Williams”, Windsor argued.

FP2 especially informative

Especially in the second free practice, Hamilton seemed to be his old self again, according to Windsor. In addition, the second session in Abu Dhabi is more important than the first, as the conditions on the track during FP2 are more comparable to the conditions that drivers will have to navigate during the race. 

Although Bottas took the fastest time in the end, Windsor thinks Hamilton set the fastest lap, regardless of whether it was annulled because of track limits. Windsor: “Lewis did a 36.0 and would have been slightly quicker but that time was deleted on the medium tyre for track limits coming out of the last corner. But I include that 36.0 only because it was a really really close shave as to whether Lewis was off track. Whether or not he was any slower would he have used slightly less track, I don’t know.” So if you ask Windsor, Mercedes has nothing to worry about this weekend.