Lewis Hamilton maintains it is better to suffer his five-place grid penalty at Monza “now than next year” after a strong Friday for the British driver.<\/p>\n
The 40-year-old topped FP1 for the Italian Grand Prix, pipping Ferrari team-mate Charles Leclerc in front of the Scuderia’s adoring fans.<\/p>\n
Despite falling to fifth-fastest in the second hour of running, the seven-time F1 drivers’ champion was in high spirits ahead of the rest of the weekend.<\/p>\n
“It’s pretty incredible,” Hamilton said after the second free practice session at the Temple of Speed. “Yeah, an amazing feeling leaving the garage.<\/p>\n
“Just the whole experience, just being… while I’m in blue,” he joked. “I joined the team to be in red.<\/p>\n
“But, yeah, being in the garage, the experience we had on Thursday with the Tifosi in Milan, and then to come here and drive out the garage in a red car, it’s all I ever thought it would be, and more,” he added in reflection.<\/p>\n
“FP1 was a good session, and then FP2 we made some changes and the car was a bit worse – the good thing is we can go back on that.”<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tHamilton insists ‘it will continue’<\/p>\n
Elaborating on his on-track exploits at Monza, Hamilton highlighted how he would rather endure the hardship of the penalty he received in Zandvoort this season than next year, when he hopes to have a more competitive package to work with.<\/p>\n
It has been a difficult first season at Ferrari for the 105-time grand prix winner. He has struggled to adapt to the SF-25, and the car has taken a relative step back in performance compared to the leading McLaren.<\/p>\n
“FP1 was feeling really, really strong, and FP2 was definitely much more of a struggle, but it’s better to have that in FP2 and learn from that rather than FP3, so lots of positives to take from today, and we’ll do some work overnight, and I hope that tomorrow we can be better,” Hamilton said.<\/p>\n
“The McLarens are obviously still very, very fast, and I think it’s very close with everyone in the top five and top 10, so it’ll be a challenge.<\/p>\n
“And it’s not easy to overtake. And I’ve obviously got that penalty, which is unfortunate, but better to have it now than next year, I guess.”<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, Hamilton is feeling positive about the rest of the weekend, despite his looming punishment. “Wherever I qualify, I’m starting five places back from that, which is not great, and I think it’s gonna be really difficult to overtake us,” he pointed out. “We’re all so close…<\/p>\n
“I do feel optimistic. I still feel like I could potentially move forward. I was much happier with the car today, so I hope that continues tomorrow – it will continue tomorrow, because I’ll make the changes tonight and come with a fresh head tomorrow.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lewis Hamilton maintains it is better to suffer his five-place grid penalty at Monza “now than next year”…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5142,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[3518,3521,3519,3522,3520,3517,3515,3513,3516,3514,111,139,69,3512,213],"class_list":["post-5141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motorsport","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}