Reigning F1 champion Lewis Hamilton says he has “zero comfortability” in picking up the lead of this year’s standings in the wake of his Azerbaijan win.
Hamilton claimed pole for Melbourne’s season-opener but missed out on victory, and subsequently struggled in Bahrain and China.
Hamilton was poised for third in Azerbaijan but the late drama – in which he took the lead when Valtteri Bottas had a puncture – handed him victory, and Sebastian Vettel’s drop to fourth ensured the Mercedes driver moved to the top of the standings by four points.
Hamilton, though, played down the switch in the standings, commenting: “I have zero comfortability [in leading].
“Since the last race I have not thought for one second that I am leading the World Championship, it is not in my mind, it is not that it is not important to me, it is just empty at the moment.
“There is a long, long way to go. Imagine if I got excited now knowing that we still have all the problems, it doesn’t mean anything.
“What is important is where you are in the end of the year.
“If this weekend we happen to have got on top of the issues we have with the car and start to be more consistent then I can be a lot happier because I know then I can punch either at my weight or a little bit above my weight.
“But at the moment I am punching below my weight, and that is not sufficient enough to win a World Championship.
“We have been capitalising on circumstances like the outcome of the last race, so I will take it for now but in the long term the team cannot continue to rely on that.”
When pressed on why he has yet to feel fully in sync with Mercedes’ W09, Hamilton replied: “I can’t really expand too much on it, because if we knew it all, we could do it.
“We are constantly working on a solution. The set-up direction, or getting the car set up for the weekend, has been interesting but the underlying factor comes down to how we utilise the tyres.
“People cannot write that I didn’t do testing. I did the Pirelli test last year, I did the end of season test, the mid-season test, which I really don’t like doing, but the tyres are behaving differently this year.
“There is that and the balance we are having with the tyres is shifting a little bit and from one session to another, we change the car set-up, it does not correlate with what the tyres should do, so it is a moving target that we are struggling to get steady.
“That’s really what we are working on and trying on how I can minimise those losses from the set up.”
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