ZANDVOORT, Netherlands — Lewis Hamilton said he felt grateful just to have made it to Q3 for the Dutch Grand Prix, saying its as comfortable as he can remember feeling with his Ferrari car this season.
Hamilton has had a tricky start to life as a Ferrari driver and during a tough spell ahead the August break he labelled his performances “useless” and suggested the Italian team needed to change drivers.
The seven-time world champion looked in a more chipper mood after qualifying even if Ferrari appears to be a long way off podium contention — Hamilton qualified seventh, one place behind teammate Charles Leclerc.
“Definitely encouraging to at least on my side of the garage to have a better result, as the boys in the garage deserve it, and the team deserves it,” Hamilton said on Saturday.
“Happy I could be there or thereabouts, but we’re not where we want to be, to be seven tenths off, six tenths off, in qualifying on a track like this that’s a huge amount, so we’ve got to understand what that is because Charles is [on pole] at the last race, but naturally we do still have that deficit, we’ve had it all year long.”
Having failed to progress to the top-ten qualifying shootout at the two races before the break, lining up 16th in Belgium and 12th in Hungary.
“I tried to have a slightly different approach to the weekend,” he added. “I’m not going to go into details of what that is, but, some tweaks, before I even got here, and then through the weekend, and it’s been a lot smoother.
“Yesterday the car was a bit unpredictable and I think we made some changes, maybe the wind makes it a little bit difficult as well, but I think we were looking for progress and I feel like I have had that this weekend, I’ve not been in Q3 for some time, so I am grateful for that.
“It’s not been up and down on changes, it’s been quite stable, we just made small tweaks, really really small tweaks, and therefore just been trying to gain more and more confidence in the car and I think that’s what’s happened the last couple of days.”
While Ferrari are not expecting a miraculous turnaround overnight, after Zandvoort comes the team’s home race at Monza’s Italian Grand Prix.
Hamilton said he is determined to go into that much-anticipated occasion on a good note.
“It’s definitely important to have a solid weekend in general, last couple have been nightmare-ish. Get to bed early tonight and come back strong tomorrow, hopefully have a solid day.”
– Wolff admits he misses ‘great enemy’ Horner
– Hadjar celebrates career best qualifying result
