An upbeat Lewis Hamilton declared Thursday things would be different at the Chinese Grand Prix after a disappointing debut with Ferrari in Melbourne, saying his new team “can close the gap” on McLaren.<\/p>\n
The seven-time world champion qualified eighth and finished 10th at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.<\/p>\n
“I’m just going to set the car up a bit different this weekend,” Hamilton told reporters ahead of his second outing in red at the Shanghai International Circuit, where he has won on a record six occasions.<\/p>\n
“I think as I get more and more comfortable and more knowledgeable about the car, I can start making more decisions (about its set-up),” he added, according to AFP.<\/p>\n
“I’m having those discussions and going to lean a little bit more with adding my experience.”<\/p>\n
Hamilton’s former Mercedes team-mate George Russell told reporters that McLaren, whose Lando Norris won in Australia, were quick enough to win every race.<\/p>\n
But Hamilton cautioned: “It has only been one race. Yes, McLaren has done a great job and they’re looking very strong.<\/p>\n
“We’re still just taking the time to learn the car and to be able to extract more from it.<\/p>\n
“We definitely have work to do, I don’t think we’re on the pace of the McLarens, but I think we can close the gap.”<\/p>\n
Hamilton conceded it had been a poor weekend for Ferrari in Melbourne, where the team strategists gambled and lost on leaving him out on slick tyres when he was leading as rain returned.<\/p>\n
“I mean, it wasn’t the race that we wanted but it’s not a moment to throw the toys out the pram,” said Hamilton.<\/p>\n
Teammate Charles Leclerc was eighth, meaning Ferrari’s dismal five points from the race was their worst season-opening performance since 2009.<\/p>\n
“It is what it is. One small thing could have made a big difference in our result, but yeah, we move forward,” said Hamilton.<\/p>\n
“Everyone’s still motivated. You got everyone here with their heads high, the energy is still good in the garage.<\/p>\n
“We’re not going to be defined by that one race.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An upbeat Lewis Hamilton declared Thursday things would be different at the Chinese Grand Prix after a disappointing debut with Ferrari in Melbourne, saying his new team “can close the gap” on McLaren. The seven-time world champion qualified eighth and finished 10th at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix. “I’m just going to set the car …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44950,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44949"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44951,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44949\/revisions\/44951"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}