Lewis Hamilton believes the set-up he ran on his Ferrari during the United States Grand Prix left much to be desired, with his front wing being “12 clicks down” for much of the race. According to the seven-time champion, this is what caused the performance gap between him and team-mate Charles Leclerc.
Hamilton started fifth at the Circuit of the Americas and crossed the line fourth. Despite what could be seen as a mildly successful race for the driver, he wrestled with heavy understeer in the opening two stints as the leaders drove away.
“I was lacking pace in the first two stints basically,” he said. “I just couldn’t turn the car. And I think ultimately it all kind of started on Friday. Wrong set-up really for P1 and then went the wrong direction in P2. Reverted back and got to a better place for P3.
“But there’s a subtle difference between Charles and I and our cars basically just in the race and it’s just to do mostly with flap, for how much wing you put in, and I think we’ve just been underhitting it. Continuously under hit it for some reason.
“And when you do the lap to the grid it feels like the car is good and then as soon as the race starts massive washout and understeer and I couldn’t do anything about it, so they just pulled away. I lost those eight seconds and that’s really why I didn’t get that position in the end.”
Hamilton said Ferrari added front wing at each of his pitstops, but still had not found the right balance by the end of the race.
Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari
Photo by: Brett Farmer / LAT Images via Getty Images
“Because through the pitstops I added four clicks. The next pitstop I added another four clicks and even then I’m still another four clicks too short. And it’s crazy, to be 12 clicks down, we really need to look at how we get into that point, you know? But I think it would have been a bit different if we had started with it, I think in P2 where you did the long run. That’s where Charles got the experience on that set-up and I didn’t get the long run on it.”
Once the car started to turn in the final stint, Hamilton matched the pace of the cars ahead, and said he would “for sure” have been on the podium had he had that balance from the start.
“I chose to have two medium tyres because they didn’t think the hard tyre was going to be any good. In hindsight two hard tyres would have been the better one. The hard tyre was the best tyre.”
That left him starting on a used set of softs, which he said was worth “two seconds of race time” compared with the new tyres on the cars ahead. Even so, he started strong and almost took third. Unfortunately for him, he wasn’t able to pass Leclerc.
A late virtual safety car then ended any hope of a final-lap fight with Max Verstappen, which Hamilton said “would have been awesome”.
Fourth place moves Hamilton to within a point of George Russell in the fight for second in the drivers’ championship.
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