FIA Press Conference<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cYou know, I truly believed in my decision in joining Ferrari. I truly believed in what this team could achieve, what we could achieve together. And I know it started out with lots of excitement and then lots of doubt and lots of negativity that followed through a whole year.\u201d<\/p>\n
He then turned to thoughts of his family, his friends, and his fans.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I really feel like my fans really rescued me last year, my family also, and friends that stuck with me through it all. And starting into a new season, a new year, lots and lots of changes enabled in the background me to get to this position that I\u2019m in today. I just feel a lot of gratitude, a lot of pride, and very, very proud of the people that I work with. They\u2019re so passionate and have so much humility and they are so kind. And, you know, seeing them sing the national anthem today was wow, was an incredible feeling, man. Just the best.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked about the doubt, and the criticism, of his performance last year Hamilton admitted that there are moments where the most negative talk does get to him, as it did a year ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, I mean, I\u2019m only human,\u201d began Hamilton.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, you know, there\u2019s moments where I see the stuff and for sure there\u2019s moments where I allowed it to get to me and penetrate deeply. But, you know, then I went through a sequence of unplugging from that matrix. I mentioned it last year, I spent lots of time with family, lots of time with friends, real people that know me, that have never doubted me, have stuck to and by me my whole life.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then I just went on the mission from Christmas Day. The training that I put in was harder than I\u2019ve ever experienced, to keep myself in good shape, because I think at the beginning of last year I got injured here, actually, and carried that for months,\u201d added Hamilton. \u201cAnd, yeah, I think just things that I know is to never second-guess yourself, never doubt yourself. You\u2019ve got to continue to believe in yourself at the core. And those are the things that I\u2019ve managed to reimplement into my mentality. I\u2019ve rebuilt my mind to this point, to get myself back to where I was. And it\u2019s a great feeling to stand here, or to sit here right now, but to stand on that podium. As I was saying earlier on, I\u2019m probably going to sleep in this red top tonight. It\u2019s a good feeling to have the horse on there at top.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, Hamilton is not only back at the top of a Grand Prix podium for the first time in red, he is right back in the title fight. His win \u2014 coupled with Kimi Antonelli\u2019s retirement in the closing laps after his W17 experienced a failure \u2014 has him within 41 points of Antonelli atop the Drivers\u2019 Championship standings.<\/p>\n
For perhaps the first time all year, Hamilton now believes that eighth title is possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, honestly, with the way that the year started out, I have not really been thinking about it like that. I\u2019ve not been thinking about an eighth. Of course, what we had worked towards has been being able to win, but I\u2019ve always been conscious of the fact that it takes time,\u201d described Hamilton on Sunday. \u201cAnd Mercedes have come out the gates with a blistering car and blistering pace, both drivers doing such a great job. We know we have this power deficit. There\u2019s going to be tracks where we go to with long, long straights where that makes it even harder.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut as I said, we\u2019ve got a great car at the core and if we keep adding performance and we can go through the corners quicker, maybe we can narrow that deficit down a little bit until we improve or until we close the gap on power. Very, very hard to think long-term at the moment. I think it\u2019s just about taking it one race at a time, one week at a time. I\u2019ll be at the factory next week,\u201d continued Hamilton. \u201cWe\u2019ll do a download, we\u2019ll speak to the aerodynamicists, looking at all the different things that are in the pipeline, when they\u2019re coming, what effect they\u2019ll have, re-steer if I need to in whatever direction I feel that the car needs to go. Yeah, we just keep pushing and enjoying it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to just have fun with it as well, you know.\u201d<\/p>\n
With the win, Hamilton is now 41 points behind Antonelli in the Drivers\u2019 Championship race, and as he showed on Sunday, when he needs to, he now has the confidence in his challenger, his team, and himself to drop the hammer, like the Hamilton of old.<\/p>\n
Plus, Hamilton is having fun again this year.<\/p>\n
Which makes him a true title contender once again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Lewis Hamilton stunned the sporting world ahead of the 2024 Formula 1 season, announcing a shocking move…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":738279,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-738278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=738278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/738279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=738278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=738278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=738278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}