Lewis Hamilton

Hamilton reveals Spa upgrade woes: “We were both in the deep end”

19:27, 27 Jul

bySamson Ero

Lewis Hamilton has weighed in on Ferrari's team upgrade following his outing at the Belgian Grand Prix. The British driver detailed that he and his teammate are “both in the deep end” following the performance of the Maranello-based outfit at the Spa circuit.

Hamilton, who had headed into the race weekend off the back of impressive outings at the Austrian and British Grands Prix, largely struggled at the Ardennes forest event, failing to advance past the first round of qualifying for both the sprint race and the Grand Prix.

Sharing his thoughts with the media, including GPblog, following the conclusion of the race weekend, the 40-year-old admitted it was a challenging outing for him and Charles Leclerc due to the changes and upgrades made to the SF-25 car.

“Yeah, obviously it was challenging being way back there. I made some changes overnight—so much in the build-up to this week—obviously with the upgrade that we had. There are basically two elements to it. One of those elements we had to test back in Montreal, but I didn’t end up testing it. Charles ended up testing it, and then he ended up using it for part of a couple of races.”

Hamilton praises Leclerc after podium finish

Hamilton also praised Charles Leclerc following his performance at the Spa race. The Monegasque driver qualified and finished in third place during the race, clinching yet another podium for the Ferrari team.

“So he's definitely... he did a great job today, and he's feeling more acclimatised. For me, it was the first time using it. That spin that we had caught me out because we did not expect it. Also, a change of engineers—so we were both getting a clutch, we were both in the deep end basically. And I think we did a really good job overnight to rectify some of those issues and tweak it quite a bit. The car was so much better after that.”

Hamilton, for his part, put in a recovery drive, moving up the grid from his pit lane start to finish in sixth place. The British driver will now shift his focus to the upcoming Hungarian Grand Prix with the hope of achieving a better result.