Hamilton couldn't keep up with Verstappen: "He was just so fast"

Lewis Hamilton recorded his best result of the season so far with second place in the French Grand Prix. The Mercedes driver can therefore be more than satisfied with the result, but his team stresses that it still clearly lags behind Red Bull Racing and Ferrari. Hamilton also found this out after the restart that followed a safety car situation.

Asked if he had any hopes of taking over the lead from Max Verstappen when the opportunity arose, Hamilton replied in the negative. "I was trying to keep up with Max. He was just so fast," the Briton said at the post-race press conference. "I was kind of keeping with him for maybe two laps."

Hamilton commented that the pace of the RB18 was particularly hard to keep up with on the straight. He therefore judges that his team is still seriously lacking in that area. "So if you’re losing four tenths, whatever it is, three tenths whatever it is on the straight this, there’s nothing you can do about that," the Mercedes driver continued, before adding that his team needs to work hard to improve that for the future.

According to Hamilton, the team has other areas to improve. Whatever the case, second place was all that was left in the race at Circuit Paul Ricard. "If I pushed any more maybe I wouldn't have seen the end of the race at the same position so I had to also keep in mind keeping the car in one piece and keeping the tyres there. This is the best result we could get," said Hamilton.