- Lewis Hamilton crossed the line in seventh after a disappointing race in Japan
- He has not yet surpassed his teammate Charles Leclerc in a Grand Prix this year
- Ferrari is already 76 points from McLaren in the manufacturers’ classification
Life in red turns out to be far from a dream for Lewis Hamilton, who said he wanted to understand why his underperform car compared to his Ferrari teammate, Charles Leclerc.
A bad qualification session on Saturday left the seven times world champion with a mountain to climb in Raceday in Suzuka.
From the eighth, Hamilton was at least one of the rare pilots to finish an overtaking, passing Isack Hadjar of the Bulls of racing in the first stages.
But it was as promising that the afternoon obtained for Hamilton. He finished three places behind Leclerc in seventh, which means that he was surpassed by his new teammate in the two races they have finished this season.
“Happy to have advanced,” said Hamilton, who was disqualified by the Chinese Grand Prix after winning a surprise victory over the Sprint race in Shanghai. “I really hope that the next race, we will see positive changes.
“Through the first three races, there was a little deficit between the two sides of the garage.
Lewis Hamilton admitted that there had been a “deficit” in performance between him and Charles Leclerc
Leclerc has surpassed his teammate in the two races they have finished this season
Ferrari is 76 points behind McLaren in the manufacturers’ ranking after only three Grands Prix
“For my part, something is underperforming, so it’s good to know. With what I had was the best result I could get.
The two Ferrari drivers were involved in more tense conversations on team radio in Japan, where Max Verstappen held his cheek to win the pole position.
While he was looking for answers for his lack of rhythm, Hamilton was clearly frustrated by the lack of details he received from Riccardo Adami, his new racing engineer.
The Briton was also annoyed by suggestions for early dentition problems when asked for similar exchanges when the season was opened in Melbourne.
The attention will only turn on radio messages and will return to the questions on the track only if the results are starting to resume for Hamilton. He admitted that his team had ground to make up for the Bahrain Grand Prix of next weekend.
“It will certainly be interesting, for sure,” said the 40 -year -old player. “I hope we will be a little closer, we are probably the fourth fastest clearly at the moment and I think we are definitely a little of the other guys. We have work to do to fill the gap.
