Lewis Hamilton explains ‘not spectacular’ start in Austria as Charles Leclerc admits Ferrari have ‘a lot of work’ to do

Lewis Hamilton has defined the problems he confronted throughout a “not spectacular” Friday on the Austrian Grand Prix, with Ferrari workforce mate Charles Leclerc additionally suggesting that there’s “lots of work to be performed” in a single day.

Whereas Leclerc sat out FP1 handy his automotive over to rookie Dino Beganovic, Hamilton had a disrupted session owing to a gearbox drawback, which means that he misplaced time on observe whereas the workforce labored on his SF-25 within the storage.

The seven-time World Champion finally returned to motion, however had the bottom lap depend of the session. And whereas issues ran extra easily in FP2, the Briton – who ended the hour in tenth on the timesheets – admitted that it had not been a simple day on the Red Bull Ring.

Requested to evaluate his Friday, Hamilton responded: “Not spectacular. We had an issue within the morning with the gearbox, which was clearly troublesome, irritating for everybody within the storage clearly as a result of the boys did an excellent job, saved topping it up.

“However you exit, you may solely do one lap, and so we didn’t get the lengthy runs. However I feel we recovered okay with it, they did an excellent job altering the gearbox and getting us prepared for FP2.

“Charles was six-tenths off, I used to be near a second off, so not ultimate. However I feel there’s plenty of learnings, so I feel we’ll make some modifications. Hopefully we will try to get a little bit bit nearer. We received’t be on the entrance.”

Pushed on whether or not the brand new ground that the workforce have delivered to the occasion is a part of a wider package deal unfold over the subsequent few races aimed toward shifting the squad forwards, Hamilton mentioned: “An enormous quantity of labor went on to convey the ground, however as you see it’s not essentially modified our competitiveness.

“The automotive truly doesn’t really feel unhealthy, we’re simply an enormous chunk off pace-wise, so we have to look into that and that’s about it actually. We simply preserve pushing, simply making an attempt to dial the automotive in additional and see what we will get, but it surely’s clearly very shut within the high 10 so a tenth may make a distinction, so we’ll work in the direction of making an attempt to realize a minimum of that over the night time.”

Leclerc additionally appeared disenchanted by how Friday had unfolded, the Monegasque ending his sole apply session in fifth place.

When quizzed on whether or not he was glad along with his day’s work, Leclerc answered: “Probably not. [Missing] FP1 didn’t actually compromise FP2. I felt form of comfy on the observe straightaway, however probably not comfy with the automotive and the best way the automotive feels, so there’s fairly a bit of labor to be performed for tomorrow.

“It doesn’t really feel just like the efficiency is sort of there but, however hopefully we’ll put all the things collectively tomorrow and do a step ahead, however there’s numerous work to be performed tonight.

“Long term [pace] appears to be extra constructive as we fairly often have – we’re sooner on the race [pace] than we’re in Qualifying. In Qualifying there’s lots of work to be performed.”

Regardless of the difficulties on Friday, Leclerc stays assured that Ferrari’s race tempo can a minimum of put them nearer to their rivals in concept.

“Our race tempo may be very constructive,” the eight-time race winner commented. “We had been, I’d say, [setting] very related lap occasions to the quickest guys, in order that’s good, however the issue is that we’ve seen just lately that all the things is so shut, and as quickly as you begin P6, P7, then within the race it’s extraordinarily troublesome to return again the place you ought to be.

“In order that’s actually our goal, is to try to maximise Qualifying – whether or not we’ll make it or not I don’t know, however there might be lots of work tonight to try to maximise that.”

As for Beganovic, the F2 driver was delighted to expertise FP1 on the wheel of the SF-25, the 21-year-old admitting that he felt “on it straightaway”.

“It felt superb, it’s all the time very good to drive an F1 automotive,” mentioned Beganovic. “Doing an F1 weekend is clearly much more particular, and on high of that doing it in a Ferrari, much more particular. It means so much to me.

“That is my sixth 12 months now [in the Ferrari Driver Academy], so it’s been a protracted journey and right here we’re doing the steps in the direction of my objective, which is to have an F1 seat sooner or later, and doing these programmes that we’ve within the Academy actually helps me to indicate myself but in addition get a primary style of what it’s.”