Hamilton: “Best qualifying so far. In Q3 perhaps the others will start the engine…”. And it still stings on the simulator

Leclerc beaten, but the Mercedes powered… As always happens when he manages to stay ahead of his teammate, Lewis Hamilton showed up smiling and in good spirits at the post-Sprint Qualifying interviews, despite at the end of SQ3 the two McLarens finishing ahead of the Englishman, demoting him from the second to the third row. The Ferrari driver (who set the fifth fastest time), however, underlined the good work done this Friday and reiterated for the camera the fact that he had not used the simulator to prepare for this weekend, in what is becoming a somewhat cloying case within the Ferrari clan. The ‘simulator case’ continues “This was probably the best qualifying session we’ve had so far for a long time – observed Hamilton to the microphones of Sky Sport – we did a great job with the engineers, we made some changes to the set-up which made me feel great and then we made some other small changes for qualifying. Q1 and Q2 went quite well. Then I don’t know why, the others perhaps revved up the engine a little more. However, I’m happy to have been there in fight and I had a lot of fun today on the track. Furthermore, I think that having not worked in the simulator I felt better than at any other weekend this year. “We worked really hard – continued Hamilton, explaining how he prepared for this race weekend – we analyzed the data from the last few weeks and I found this much more useful and it gave us many more benefits. I also found the optimization of the stability of the car and the mechanical balance by choosing a set-up that we had never used before. I believe that this has transformed the car, so I hope that this is also a good omen for the next weekends too.”

Automobile Magazine – F1 English News , 2026-05-23 08:16:00