Lewis Hamilton says Mercedes took a “good step forward” with his car at the Monaco Grand Prix after both drivers finished in the top five.
Mercedes brought a major upgrade to Monaco that should have been rolled out at Imola last weekend, and insisted he learned little about it on the tight street circuit. However, after team principal Toto Wolff claimed that the drivers were happier with the car’s handling over the race weekend after climbing from fifth to fourth, Hamilton was encouraged by the performance shown.
“Yeah, that’s a good result,” said Hamilton. “Overall, as a team, I think we made a good step forward by finishing fourth and fifth in a difficult race like today’s. I think that’s a great result. The team did a really great job with the strategy today and I think getting ahead of Ferrari is amazing.
“The car seems to have developed – it has moved forward. I think next week we’ll have a much better view of where we can really push, with medium to fast corners, but overall I think it’s been a really positive weekend for us.”
Hamilton’s positive attitude was also partly due to having to deal with the car in such difficult conditions as heavy rain fell, putting pressure on Esteban Ocon to finish last on the podium.
“It was very, very bad. There really are no words to describe how hard it was and I guess on my part I couldn’t set the temperature in the adapters so I just tiptoed. I think our crossover was good, I just lost ground to everyone when I had to stop, so we were a bit at a disadvantage there and that just made it a bit artificial but no bugs, I kept it on track.
“As for me, I felt it was very, very nervous when my tires were not working, so I felt like I was on ice! But then, after a while, the tires started working and it started to feel good. I was so close to going down, crashing and a big stagnation, but it was amazing.
