Lewis Hamilton says he tried “something completely different” in the setup of his car this weekend in Abu Dhabi in an attempt to try and overhaul Nico Rosberg’s advantage.
The German scored his sixth consecutive pole position on Saturday and is aiming to convert that into his sixth victory of the season, but Hamilton is trying everything to stop that happened, but believes a change made to the car in Singapore has disadvantaged him.
“It was a lot more comfortable in the beginning of the year for me,” he said after qualifying almost four-tenths down on Rosberg.
“It’s just a balance thing. It’s been different for a few races now. I did my best; we worked as hard as we could with the engineers to try and go around it, try something different – we’ve tried something completely different this weekend.
“Generally it gets a bit better in the race. I’m struggling on the edge with the car, I’m a lot more comfortable in the beginning [of races].
“I’m disappointed with myself a little bit with one of the things I’ve taken off the car, but at the end of the day I couldn’t do anything [to beat Rosberg].”
Although Hamilton has failed to come from second to win at the previous two races, he is hoping to change that on Sunday, though admits it won’t be easy.
“I’m going to try as hard as I can to get a good start tomorrow, I’ve got a lot of British flags here, a lot of support, so I’ll see what I can do from there,” he added.
“It is tough to overtake here, as although you’ve got the DRS zone down the back straight, you can’t follow [closely] through Turns 2 and 3. So the gap gets pulled out there.”
