Lewis Hamilton was content after topping the two Friday free practice sessions for the Canadian Grand Prix, despite having an eventful day’s running.
Hamilton was comfortably fastest in both sessions, apparently continuing the trend that the Montreal track is a happy hunting ground for him. But he also had a spin in the first session, crashed out in heavy rain in the second, as well as other incidents earlier including a flight across the kerbs at the final chicane.
He reckoned that without that incident in second practice he would have been even further ahead in the final times. “The one [lap] that went over the kerbs was faster. The next lap I had to back off a little bit,” he said afterwards.
Hamilton nevertheless accepted fault for this, along with his later crash at the hairpin when, after being sent out to do practice starts in rapidly deteriorating conditions, he apparently aquaplaned straight on into the barriers at the hairpin.
“I did three mistakes today,” he admitted. “The wet one was my mistake, it was very slippy and I wasn’t driving particularly fast, on the wets I came into turn 10 and it was just like ice. Just going too fast.
“Then the spin…the ECU locked the rear wheels, it separated and then it locked, I couldn’t catch it. That’s an issue that we’ve fixed, so that wasn’t really my fault.
“In the other one [going over the kerbs] I braked too late into the last corner and went over the kerb. Just pushing.”
But Hamilton did not have any regrets at his attacking approach: “I’m just looking to extract the most from the track and when you do the laps on the track you have to maximise every minute you get; you can’t build up to be slow. You have to get there and then work out where you can be faster.
“On that one lap [when he went over the kerbs] I pushed later than ever at the last corner because there’s a lot of time to be found.”
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