Lewis Hamilton commends Ferrari for impressive beginning to F1 testing
Lewis Hamilton noted that Ferrari has made a stronger start to F1 testing compared to the previous year, commending his Italian team for the “amazing” mileage achieved on Thursday.
Hamilton experienced his first dry session during Barcelona’s private preseason test on the fourth day, with the seven-time world champion and teammate Charles Leclerc collectively completing 172 laps.
In Bahrain last year—Hamilton’s initial test with Ferrari following a significant move from Mercedes—both the driver and the team faced issues with reliability.
“When you arrive at the test, you always aim for a lot of mileage; today I managed 85 laps in the morning, which is fantastic,” Hamilton stated. “And that’s really thanks to everyone at the factory who has done an excellent job ensuring the car is quite reliable so far. So, you know, last year we had a more challenging start to testing.
“Therefore, this is actually, given that it’s a completely new set of regulations, an improvement over what we’ve encountered in the past. So I’m genuinely hopeful that this trend continues.”
Ferrari also showed promising pace on Thursday, although Mercedes seems to be the team to beat at this stage.
Sources informed ESPN that George Russell recorded a fastest lap of 1:16.445 on Thursday, which was 0.636 seconds quicker than Kimi Antonelli’s morning benchmark and 1.778 seconds faster than Leclerc’s Ferrari, which was third fastest overall.
Source: espn.com
