Lewis Hamilton managed to gather some points in Monaco after a disappointing qualifying, but he says that Mercedes can no longer afford a weekend like that in the Principality. Due to the disappointing race weekend, Hamilton and Mercedes lost the lead in the championship.
It was not Lewis Hamilton’s weekend, on Saturday he did not get past a seventh fastest time in qualifying and on Sunday he saw the finish flag in the same position. With that he still gathered seven points, but that was not enough to prevent Max Verstappen from taking the lead in the championship.
Mercedes underperformed all weekend and strategically there were some problems during the race. Something can be done about that strategic aspect, but the world champion is especially concerned about the difference in pace between his Mercedes W12 and Max Verstappen’s Red Bull RB16B.
“It’s going to be tough,” said Hamilton. “I said it at the beginning, they have a championship-winning car, and they are going to be very hard to beat.”
“I’ve said it all year. We’ve won races that we shouldn’t have won, like in Bahrain. But it is not over yet, there is still a long, long way to go. ”
“We certainly can’t afford another weekend like this, but I’m grateful that I finished, and thankful that I finished and got some points and the fastest lap.”
“Every little point you can take on such a bad weekend will hopefully count towards something at the end.”
As if all that was not enough, things went completely wrong at the pit stop of Valtteri Bottas when a wheel nut stubbornly held on to the Finn’s car and he had to give up. But Hamilton believes his team will recover from this.
“Of course it’s not a great weekend, but I don’t feel like I’m going to dwell on it,” said Hamilton.
“There is a lot we could have done better in terms of how we prepared to go into the weekend. We had some good conversations over the weekend. But it wasn’t good enough for all of us. ”
“We win and lose as a team, and collectively it’s not a good job for all of us, across the board. And we don’t take it lightly. ”
“But there is no point in getting depressed. We need to look at the data and find out why we are in this position. Of course we all want answers within the team. ”
“I know everyone will work very hard to make sure that hopefully these weekends don’t happen again.”
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