Lewis Hamilton is confident the upgrade Ferrari has brought for this weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix will allow him to get more out of his SF-25.
Aside from his victory in the Shanghai sprint race three weeks ago, Hamilton has not looked as confident in the car as team mate Charles Leclerc. He revealed after last week’s race at Suzuka the team was bringing an upgrade to address a specific problem with their car.
Speaking ahead of this weekend’s race in Bahrain, Hamilton confirmed he is seeking an improvement in his car’s rear-end balance.
“We’ve got an upgrade this weekend, so I’m excited,” he told the official F1 channel. “We’re going to hopefully have a bit more downforce.
“I’m not really feeling a huge amount of issues, it’s just we lack overall performance at the moment pace-wise, which we hopefully will take a step [with] this weekend. On my side, it’s rear end, it’s a little bit, and that’s about it.”
The series’ return to Bahrain after pre-season testing two months ago gives Ferrari the chance to compare the performance of its upgraded car with its original design.
“I’ve done quite a bit of driving since the test that we had here, so I should be a lot more comfortable in the car than I was through testing here,” said Hamilton. “We’ve got an upgrade, got a better understanding of the set-up, so hopefully should bode well for a better weekend.”
However his team mate Charles Leclerc believes the team saw the full extent of its deficit to championship leaders McLaren at the last race in Suzuka and doubts the changes they have brought to their car for this weekend will be enough to overcome that.
“We’ve got some new bits on the car coming which I hope will help us to close that gap a little bit,” he said. “Whether it will be enough to close the complete gap, I don’t think so. I don’t think that there’s that [much] in what we are bringing here, but I hope it will help us at least to be closer.
“But it’s still quite a significant step. In Suzuka, I think that this was the [true] gap that there is between McLaren and ourselves, which is three tenths [of a second per lap] and we need to work very hard in order to catch that.
“So that’s what we are doing, and I’m confident that we can close that gap. What we’re bringing here, I don’t think will be enough, but hopefully short-term we’ll have other things that will help us to be closer.”
- Keith Collantine
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