{"id":28720,"date":"2024-03-02T05:08:51","date_gmt":"2024-03-02T02:08:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/28720\/hamilton-encouraged-by-fantastic-mercedes\/"},"modified":"2024-03-02T05:08:52","modified_gmt":"2024-03-02T02:08:52","slug":"hamilton-encouraged-by-fantastic-mercedes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/?p=28720","title":{"rendered":"Hamilton encouraged by &#8216;fantastic&#8217; Mercedes after Bahrain qualifying"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hamilton encouraged by &#8216;fantastic&#8217; Mercedes after Bahrain qualifying\u060c<\/p>\n<div>\n<aside class=\"inline inline-photo full\">\n<figure><picture><source data- media=\"(min-width: 376px)\"><source data- media=\"(max-width: 375px)\"><img class=\" lazyload lazyload\" data-image-container=\".inline-photo\" height=\"320\" width=\"570\"\/><\/source><\/source><\/picture><figcaption class=\"photoCaption\">Lewis Hamilton qualified ninth in Bahrain. <cite>David Davies\/PA Images via Getty Images<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/aside>\n<p>SAKHIR, Bahrain \u2014 Lewis Hamilton was disappointed with his own qualifying efforts for the Bahrain Grand Prix, but encouraged that the session appeared to confirm Mercedes&#39; step forward for 2024.<\/p>\n<p>Hamilton will <a class=\"wpil_keyword_link\" href=\"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/tag\/start\/\"   title=\"start\" data-wpil-keyword-link=\"linked\">start<\/a> Saturday night&#39;s race from ninth, but teammate George Russell qualified third, 0.3 seconds behind championship favorite Max Verstappen.<\/p>\n<p><alsosee><\/p>\n<p>Hamilton, who enters his final season with Mercedes before joining Ferrari in 2025, has been buoyed by the performance of his new car.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh yeah, the car is really fantastic, it\u2019s a real big improvement on previous years,\u201d Hamilton said on Friday evening.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA lot more stable, a lot more fun to drive but we still have work to do as you can see. But for George to be three tenths behind Max is incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hamilton hasn&#39;t won a race since November 2021, but seemed optimistic that Mercedes&#39; new car could eventually find itself in the mix this year.<\/p>\n<p>He added: &#8220;[I&#8217;m] much more excited.  For the first qualifying session to have been so poor, there was so much preparation today and then it didn&#39;t go as planned&#8230; But that&#39;s racing.  But in terms of season, for sure.  Knowing that we have a package that we can potentially compete with is really nice.  \u00bb<\/p>\n<p>Regarding Russell&#39;s qualifying efforts specifically, Hamilton said: &#8220;It shows what&#39;s possible, yes. And I think we really need to keep adding performances. If that&#39;s our platform from here, We can continue until the end of the season.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Hamilton has never been shy about making aggressive setup changes in the build-up to F1 races and the seven-time champion admitted he took a different direction to Russell after Friday&#39;s two practice sessions.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Yesterday George and I had identical car settings and the car felt good, then we drifted. He went one way and I went the other. You could say the one I was on wasn&#39;t not good on one lap. I hope it goes well in the race.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Hamilton said he pushed for the change after running Friday&#39;s longer runs, effectively the team&#39;s best data on what the race could look like.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I wasn&#39;t comfortable with my race pace and so I changed cars to hopefully improve the race pace. We&#39;ll see tomorrow if that&#39;s really the case, but trying to find a good balance for race pace.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><\/alsosee><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hamilton encouraged by &#8216;fantastic&#8217; Mercedes after Bahrain qualifying\u060c Lewis Hamilton qualified ninth in Bahrain. David Davies\/PA Images via Getty Images SAKHIR, Bahrain \u2014 Lewis Hamilton was disappointed with his own qualifying efforts for the Bahrain Grand Prix, but encouraged that the session appeared to confirm Mercedes&#39; step forward for 2024. Hamilton will start Saturday night&#39;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28721,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[11248,11421,5502,1893,3352,5540],"class_list":["post-28720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-sports","tag-bahrain","tag-encouraged","tag-fantastic","tag-hamilton","tag-mercedes","tag-qualifying"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28720"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28722,"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28720\/revisions\/28722"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wikidollar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}