Lewis Hamilton warns: Red Bull Racing now a “serious rival”

Lewis Hamilton, the winner at Barcelona, was bitterly disappointed at the following race in Spielberg. Although he secured third on the grid with a strong qualifying performance, there was nothing he could do against Mercedes and Max Verstappen of Red Bull Racing. Hamilton had to settle for fifth place. At least his team-mate Charles Leclerc only managed eighth place.

Two-stop or three-stop?

After his disappointing Austrian Grand Prix, Hamilton said: “For some reason, we simply lacked the pace.” On top of challenges with the car, there were also disagreements over the choice of strategy. Hamilton: “In the strategy briefing, they said it would be a two-stop strategy. A three-stop strategy would be four seconds slower. They gave us this information on Saturday evening and Sunday morning. But I was firmly convinced that it would be a three-stop strategy for me.”

The seven-time world champion explained: “I thought tyre wear would be extremely high, especially as the track temperature today was higher than it has been for a long, long time. It was between the mid-50s and 60 degrees. That’s why I thought tyre wear would be enormous for us. So I wanted to start on the soft tyres, but the team were nervous. And so it came to pass that they insisted we start on the medium tyres, which, in my opinion, wasn’t ideal in the end. I think we’d probably have had roughly the same pace. Maybe, just maybe, I could have started on the soft tyres. Maybe I would have finished fourth.”

Hamilton praises Verstappen’s upgrade

Aside from the problems within his own camp, Lewis Hamilton also noticed something exciting about Max Verstappen and Red Bull Racing, with whom he was locked in a series of thrilling battles throughout the race. Hamilton acknowledged: “They’ve taken a huge step forward this weekend. I reckon they must have brought an upgrade worth three to four tenths. Three tenths came from the weight reduction on the car alone, which is enormous. When you consider that they were so close in some races, such as in Monaco, where they were nine kilos overweight, it’s clear proof that they have a good car and have managed to shed that weight. And then they’ve brought along a whole host of upgrades, so they’ll be serious contenders in the upcoming races.”

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