Lewis Hamilton says that Ferrari’s performance at the Austin Grand Prix was ‘an amazing result’ after he and teammates Charles Leclerc finished fourth and third respectively.
Despite underperforming in Saturday’s sprint race, the Prancing Horse found good pace during the Grand Prix with Hamilton moving up to fourth during the race on Sunday having overtaken former Mercedes teammate George Russell.
Leclerec battled against McLaren’s Lando Norris but couldn’t make it past the title challenger and instead had to settle for third place though he was awarded driver of the day for his efforts.
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen claimed victory and added more points to his sprint race win meaning he is only 40 points behind drivers’ championship leader Oscar Piastri in his pursuit of a fifth world title.
“Yeah, a good result – an amazing result for the team,” Hamilton mused following the race.
“Third and fourth, good points. It’s great to finish ahead of the Mercedes team, to get those points and even ahead of a McLaren. Definitely a positive.
“Going forwards, even after a bad start. Lots and lots of positives to take from it and naturally I want to be further up but we’re definitely on the right path.”
Hamilton was then asked whether he had any regrets over Ferrari’s strategy to send Leclerc out on soft tyres first but the 40-year-old decided to look at the overall positives of Ferrari’s gameplan.
“I think it was clearly the quickest strategy in the end,” he explained. “Before Charles’ stop I was right with him but to come out 10 seconds behind was far too big a deficit for me to try and catch and I couldn’t close the gap at all.
“That was a bit unfortunate but considering we haven’t been upgrading the car for us to be kind of in the fight shows that the team has done a great job this weekend. We’re so close but I’ve not got that podium and I’ll keep trying.”
