Saturday, May 9, 2009

Hamilton: Worse than expected

Friday 8th May 2009

Although McLaren hadn't expected a strong weekend coming into the Spanish GP, a dejected Lewis Hamilton admits it's even worse than the team thought it would be.

Hamilton struggled for pace in Friday's practice sessions, finishing down in 13th place, 1.22s behind the leading Williams drivers.

It was disappointing result for the reigning World Champion, who is foreseeing a weekend ahead and his chances of retaining the World title slipping further away.

"That is our true pace, as you just saw," Hamilton told reporters after Friday's second practice.

Asked whether McLaren's performance around Barcelona high speed corners was as bad as he'd predicted, he said: "Yes, that is what I said coming into the weekend and it is even worse than I expected."

As for his hopes for Saturday's qualifying, the 24-year-old concedes that the top-ten shoot-out may be beyond his reach.

"We have to try to get to Q2, and then work on from there. I think it is going to be hard work to get into Q3 tomorrow.

"What we experience in practice, we definitely have a few problems. But we will still battle our way through - we just cannot carry the speed through the high speed corners like the others can. We are so slow through Turn 3 and Turn 9, we lose a lot of our time there."

Source : Planet F1

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