Lewis Hamilton is plotting an “aggressive” start from third on the grid for the Mexico City Grand Prix as he sets his sights on a first Formula 1 pole for Ferrari.
The Briton took his best grand prix qualifying result of the year at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, just under a tenth behind team-mate Charles Leclerc, as Ferrari uncovered good pace at the Mexican circuit – the site of its most recent grand prix win.
Given the lengthy drag down to the opening corner, the Mexico City venue tends to put less emphasis on the importance of pole position. As such, Hamilton is hoping to benefit from the situation where he has both Leclerc and polesitter Lando Norris punching a hole in the air in front of him.
Hamilton lauded his team for being receptive to his and Leclerc’s feedback with their engineering processes, which he says has helped the team move forward in recent races – and says that having “nothing to lose” gives him freedom to go all-in at the start.
“I definitely want to be racy tomorrow,” Hamilton said. “I don’t have anything to lose, but he does. We’ll be quite aggressive, I’m pretty sure – and hopefully we’ll be close enough to put up a good fight.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been up here [in the post-qualifying press conference], so it feels fresh. And yeah, really grateful to the team for all the hard work and just the constant effort through the year.
Charles Leclerc, Ferrari, Lando Norris, McLaren, Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images
“I mean, of course, I wish we had this experience earlier on in the year, but the fact is that we’re continuing to improve and continuing to stay positive, and so it’s great to be up here with these two.
“Our pace has been great all weekend. I think we’ve made good steps with the car through the weekend. Obviously, I missed P1, which I wouldn’t say hasn’t hampered the weekend, but of course, you learn more with more laps on the track.
“And I think I got the car to as good a place as I could. It’s definitely not easy to put a lap together, but yeah, I’m just happy to be here.”
Speaking to Sky Sports, Hamilton added that he was “finally gelling” with his engineering team after a somewhat fraught start to the year. The early rounds of the season were defined by a few terse exchanges over the radio with race engineer Riccardo Adami, as the two had to get used to communicating with each other.
The seven-time champion said that it had been an overwhelming challenge to bed in with Ferrari, but now feels he’s getting to a good place with the team.
“It’s taken me all year to get here, so it’s been a serious mountain to climb,” Hamilton told Sky. “But finally, gelling with everything around me and myself and my engineers, we’ve really started to extract the performance from the car.
“So I’m really, really happy. I just want to say it’s been a tough year and I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to get here, but it’s okay. What matters is the journey and I’ve grown a lot through it.”
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– The Autosport.com Team
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