Lewis Hamilton has faced a knock to his expectations after a difficult Formula 1 race in Austria.
The Austrian Grand Prix weekend came with high hopes for the seven-time world champion. Off the back of his first Ferrari victory, the air was filled with discussions of the Briton potentially embarking on a late title surge.
Austria started with promise. The Ferrari duo narrowly missed out on a front-row lockout on Saturday; with their notoriously impressive race starts, a victory was on the table.
Ferrari’s woes in Austria
However, the chances seemed to slip away once the lights went out. With hot temperatures around Spielberg, the tyre degradation was punishing, and Ferrari struggled with their management more than many of the teams around them.
Hamilton bemoaned the tyres and how Ferrari ‘just lacked pace’.
“I think that was pretty much it. Yeah, for some reason, we just lacked pace. But this morning in the strategy meeting, they said it’s a two-stop, three-stop is four seconds slower. Last night and this morning, they gave us that information.”
Hamilton admitted to the media, including Motorsport Week, that he wanted to do the three-stop, feeling that the degradation would be too high to manage with just two stops.
“I was dead set; it was a three for me. I thought the deg was going to be super high. Particularly as the track temperature today was the highest we’ve had it in a long, long time. It was a mid-50s to mid-60s track temperature.”
“So I thought the deg was going to be massive for us. I wanted to start on the soft, but the team were nervous. So we ended up, they pushed for us to start on the medium, which ultimately I think was sub-optimum.
“I think we probably would have been around the same pace.”
The Brit believed that taking fourth could have been possible on the three-stop strategy. He said:
“Maybe, just maybe, I would have been able to pass out on the soft. Maybe I’d have got fourth. Because that was quite a short first stint on the table as well.”
The Austrian GP’s results pushed Hamilton to third in the Championship standings, 46 points away from Kimi Antonelli out front.
It’s a long season with 13 races still to go on the calendar, and the order is still unpredictable. However, Hamilton was candid when he told the media that this weekend was a ‘reality check’ for his championship hopes and the foreseeable future.
“I think it’s more of a reality check. We don’t know why we were so competitive on Sunday in Barcelona. So, I think that’s a very strong track for me.
“I chose a strategy that I thought, from experience, I knew that would work. With the deck that we had, it was like 2021, you know.”
“But then today, I think we were hit more with reality.” He admitted, “which is that we still do have a good car, but we are down compared to Mercedes, just in terms of pace.”
He was blunt in his assessment of the gap to Mercedes, telling the media, “They just are quicker.”
Focus on development
As with any regulation shift, the emphasis is on development. The faster a team can assess the areas they are falling behind and analyse where the faster teams are picking up time, the better their chances.
However, in F1, that’s easier said than done, and development is rarely linear during a regulations overhaul like the one 2026 has brought on.
But Hamilton doubled down on how important it is and that there’s work to be done for the Maranello team.
“We still have to keep developing. It doesn’t mean we can’t close that gap.
“That one win doesn’t mean we’re going to be beating them all the time. I think it’s the opposite. We’ve got a lot of work to do.
“We still have to continue to add performance to the car, particularly in power, and that’s where we’re going to have to keep working at.”
F1 heads straight to Silverstone next weekend, where Hamilton will not only have the main race but the Sprint Race to give Hamilton a chance at reliving the 2024 glory in his home race, but this time in red.
READ MORE: Kimi Antonelli identifies crucial problems that cost him F1 Austrian GP win
Discussion about this post