The world champion was rarely known to visit Mercedes’ F1 simulator at its Brackley base during the season in recent campaigns, but he has worked overtime with his team twice in the past few weeks in response to Red Bull Took the lead in 2021.
It goes without saying that Hamilton drove the Mercedes simulator on the Wednesday before the Styrian Grand Prix last weekend and returned to Great Britain on Wednesday – before the upcoming Austrian GP, which is also taking place at the Red Bull Ring, so far only planned repeat event of F1 for the 2021 season.
Hamilton was asked about his increased simulator work at the pre-race press conference for the race this weekend, where he stated that he “can’t say I absolutely liked it”, although he insisted that “it was positive overall” .
Hamilton said, “I really think you know, especially after the last tough races we’ve had, I just went in to see if I could try to help the team be better prepared.
“I think some good things came out of it, but life hasn’t changed.
“So I’ll keep working with Anthony [Davidson – former F1 driver, current World Endurance Championship LMP2 racer and long-time Mercedes’ simulator driver] still and we have drivers there who do a lot of work.
“I think we’re just working on the processes of how we communicate with them in their program so we can get the right things tested.
“I think it was positive overall.”
Hamilton is currently in the 2021 drivers’ standings, 18 points behind Red Bull racing driver Max Verstappen.
Sir Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes
Photo by: FIA Pool
When asked how he feels about the current state of the fight for the title – in which Red Bull has taken a clear lead with four wins in a row, of which Verstappen took three – Hamilton replied: “I don’t want to worry such.
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“Of course we all pushed as hard as possible. Of course we would like to have more speed.
“At the moment, in order to be able to really challenge not only in qualifying but also in the race, they are obviously still taking steps forward and I just can’t get tied up and get into this negative bubble of concern.”
“All I’m doing right now is just trying to put all my energy into making sure I’m optimally prepared, to help the engineers be optimally prepared. Lots of great conversations.
“And this is a time when we just come together and unite and work as hard as possible to fix any problems we have.
“We do that and that is why we are world champions and have confidence in the team that we can do it.”
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