Lewis Hamilton has sent his former outfit, Mercedes, a warning that it is “not impossible” for Ferrari to catch them, following a highly encouraging Australian Grand Prix.<\/p>\n
The seven-time world champion started in seventh but was third by the end of the first lap, following an electric start and two excellent overtakes on Isack Hadjar and Arvid Lindblad.<\/p>\n
He quickly settled into the race and was in genuine podium contention, until Ferrari opted against pitting Hamilton and Charles Leclerc during two virtual safety cars.<\/p>\n
Mercedes chose to double-stack eventual race winner George Russell and second-place finisher Kimi Antonelli, costing the Ferrari duo valuable seconds when the pair pitted under green flag conditions.<\/p>\n
This dropped Hamilton to fourth, and while he had the pace to catch Leclerc, time was not in the 41-year-old’s favour to attempt a move for a maiden Ferrari podium.<\/p>\n
Despite missing out on the rostrum, Hamilton took significant satisfaction from the opening race of the season and is confident Ferrari can be caught.<\/p>\n
“All weekend I’ve been really, really strong,” Hamilton told Sky F1. “Qualifying really didn’t show the true pace. I think we had a few problems through qualifying, which meant that I was further back than I should have been.<\/p>\n
“Anyways, got into today, of course, none of us really knew what the true case was going to be, but I felt great from the get go, and was obviously closing a gap right at the end to Charles.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“A couple more laps, I think I would have had Charles, so maybe one or two more laps. So there’s lots and lots of positives to take, we’ve got a lot of work to do to catch Mercedes, but it’s not impossible.<\/p>\n
“So really, thank you to everyone back at the factory, really, really proud of the work we got. But we still have to push and keep digging deep.”<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tHamilton’s Ferrari belief<\/p>\n
The opening race was hugely encouraging for Ferrari in third and fourth, with its time deficit to Mercedes not painting a true picture.<\/p>\n
It would appear the Silver Arrows do have an advantage over one lap, but based on Melbourne’s Albert Park, Ferrari’s race pace is very similar.<\/p>\n
Hamilton truly believes the Maranello-based outfit can catch his former team this year, which could set up a title fight.<\/p>\n
Asked if he really believes Ferrari can catch Mercedes, Hamilton replied: “That’s what I said. I do believe we can close the gap. I think it’s not going to be easy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We’ve got a lot of work to do to close it, because it’s quite significant particularly on a single lap.<\/p>\n
“We need to find out whether it’s power or battery power, but the car is just as quick through the corners. So we just got to keep pushing.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lewis Hamilton has sent his former outfit, Mercedes, a warning that it is “not impossible” for Ferrari to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":526947,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[827,830,828,831,829,826,813,43,823,825,824,44,822,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-526946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-headlines","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motorsport","tag-news","tag-racing","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/526947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}