Lewis Hamilton says Mercedes are slowly closing in and they need one upgrade to be in constant contention at the top.
Hamilton finished third in the Spanish Grand Prix, 17.8 seconds behind winner Max Verstappen, and Lando Norris who felt he should have won.
Third place is Hamilton’s best result of the season and marks his first podium appearance since the 2023 Mexican Grand Prix, which he called a big boost to finally get a good result.
“We’re slowly getting closer,” Hamilton said after the race. “We were very quick here last year, so you have to take it with a grain of salt, but obviously the last couple of races we’ve been relatively competitive.”
“So I think we’ve closed the gap a bit, but we’ve still got a good few tenths to try and find. We just have to keep all hands in position and keep pushing.”
When asked if Mercedes was still tweaking the W15 package, which was recently upgraded with a new front wing concept and a lighter underbody, Hamilton replied: “It’s not the maximum it has at the moment.”
“But we’re always tweaking it with the subtle changes we make. So we’re always tweaking it and we continue to tweak it throughout the year.”
“But we have to attach some things, some extra parts to be able to fight with these drivers.”
Hamilton had to fight after being overtaken by teammate and early race leader George Russell at the start of the race in Barcelona, but managed to regain the third place he had secured with his best qualifying result to date.
After discussing his inconsistent results in qualifying to this point in 2024, Hamilton revealed that the Mercedes car was apparently only responding to one set of adjustments he had tried since the start of the ground-effect era, as well as a weakness in tire preparation. .
“Our pace is where we were, third or fourth this weekend,” he explains.
“But I think our car is generally quite jerky and that means it’s often out of balance. It’s very rare that it’s balanced and goes through the bend nice and smooth.”
“So the settings – obviously I’ve experimented a lot with the settings over the last couple of years, but the car doesn’t really like any of the settings except one.”
“It’s slowly starting to get nicer to drive. And at the end of the tire. The tires were a big problem for me. So, I think we succeeded halfway this weekend. If I manage to make some improvements during the next races, there will be more performance,” added Lewis Hamilton
