Lewis Hamilton admitted he was disappointed once again after an underwhelming weekend for Ferrari in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, the Briton expressing his utter disinterest with his eighth-place finish.
Starting from 12th on the grid after a qualifying misstep, Hamilton struggled to make significant progress in a race where overtaking proved unusually challenging – at least for the Scuderia’s contenders.
The weekend had begun with promise for Ferrari, as Hamilton led a 1-2 finish in Friday’s second practice, with teammate Charles Leclerc close behind. The momentum carried into Saturday’s final practice, but the team’s fortunes unraveled in qualifying.
A strategy miscue and being on the wrong tyre compound led to Hamilton’s elimination in Q2, leaving him P12 on the grid and just one spot ahead of Leclerc at the checkered flag.
“Not good, we were slow,” the seven-time world champion reacted after the race. “Ultimately a disappointing result, as I mentioned yesterday, from feeling so optimistic through practice.
“After P2, I felt so good in the car. I think we went in the wrong direction with the car but ultimately our pace was just not on par with the guys up ahead of us.
“Qualifying clearly is so important, if you look at where the Williams was. They did a great job, congratulations to them. What an amazing result.
“I’m happy I moved forwards from 12th but I couldn’t really care less with that position.”
Operational Improvements Needed
Hamilton called it as he saw it, suggesting that Ferrari needed to review their weekend performance and improve operationally.
“Internally we will go and see what we could have done differently,” he said. “As I said yesterday, for sure operationally we could have done a better job. That’s something we need to work on.”
While Hamilton acknowledged he had made some progress compared to Leclerc, the difficulty of overtaking and the speed of his rivals made the day frustrating.
“I felt like I made progress today,” he said. “Out of our cars my pace was decent, but the others were just rapid. It was so hard to overtake here today.
“It was an unusual Baku race with not really much overtaking and really hard to follow. Definitely disappointed to come away with nothing.”
Ferrari’s disappointing result saw the Italian outfit slip behind Mercedes in the Constructors’ championship with seven rounds remaining, underscoring the work still to be done.
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