Lewis Hamilton reveals: This factor is crucial for success in the Monza qualifying session

Ferrari has pulled out all the stops for its home race at Monza. The Scuderia from Maranello has not only developed a special livery to celebrate Michael Schumacher’s first season with Ferrari 30 years ago. It has also boosted the engine for the race on the high-speed circuit in the Royal Park.

And Lewis Hamilton is pleased with the result. The third-placed driver in the World Championship says: “In the slow sections, the new power unit’s drivability is really good, but that wasn’t a major issue here as we only have a few slower corners. The team has done a great job in that respect, though.”

The fast sections are the far bigger problem, as the seven-time world champion confirms. “Our biggest area for improvement is speed on the straights. Compared to George Russell, I only lost about six-tenths on the straights,” calculated the record GP winner. “We’ll obviously have to look into that. The same goes for the car’s balance. It was really tricky to put together a good lap.”

And Hamilton muses: “For some reason, the car wasn’t as good to drive in the second practice session. We did make a few changes after the first practice session, but that shouldn’t actually have led to a deterioration. Perhaps we’ll go back to the way it was; we need to look into it – maybe we can make the car faster.”

He’s hoping for adjustments to energy consumption: “We need to look into that,” says the driver with 106 Grand Prix wins to his name. “The way we use energy is clearly different from that of our rivals. We need to look into that.” Hamilton also reveals what will be crucial in qualifying on the Italian circuit: “It’ll all be about slipstreaming; that’s what I’ll be focusing on.”

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