Hamilton no esperaba estar como ganador ante los periodistas este domingo. Y menos, acompañado, como escoltas, por los dos pilotos de Ferrari.
“Ha sido un día hermoso. Que gran trabajo del equipo. Llegamos aquí sabiendo que Ferrari iba a estar a tope, por lo que esto es un bono para nosotros, como que nos hemos ganado las vacaciones de las próximas semanas. Terminé muy transpirado, hacía muchísimo calor dentro del auto, pero la verdad lo que me deja exhausto es la celebración de la victoria ya que me fluye toda la alegría, nos abrazamos todo y dejo la última energía que me queda. Ahora voy a descansar unos días, pero no soy del tipo de los que se tiran en la playa. Voy a estar activo, entrenando para la segunda mitad del año, en la que tenemos que ser tan fuertes como en estas ultimas carreras”.
Preguntado sobre cual ciudad preferiría para estas vacaciones (del hemisferio norte), Lewis expresó:
“Si tuviera que dar un orden diría Nueva York, Tokio, aquí en Budapest y por supuesto Lonxres. Pero ahora en vacaciones sólo sé que iré a visitar a mi madre, a mi hermana y mis sobrinos y pasaré cuatro o cinco días con ellos. Luego, honestamente no sé. Pero Budapest, quizás, sí, quizás vuelva en unos días pues tengo buenos amigos aquí y me encanta el clima joven que se respira”.
En cuanto a su liderazgo en el Campeonato…
“Ni en sueños imaginé estar dónde estoy ahora considerando todos los factores, comparandonos con Ferrari. Con victorias seguidas llegamos a estas semanas sin carreras con mucho empuje. Este trabajo es duro para todos en el equipo, viajando por todo el mundo y ahora tendrán la posibilidad de pasar tiempo con sus familias y sus amigos. Creo que eso nos dará la intensidad necesaria para encarar lo que viene, que en los últimos años siempre ha sido mejor que la primera parte, así que tengo mucha ilusión…”
Llegó el turno a Sebastian evidentemente desconforme con el resultado.
“En realidad teníamos mas velocidad que lo que el final reflejó. Como mínimo en el ritmo de Lewis. Tuve una buena largada con el compuesto mas duro y se puso un poco complejo el decidir cuando ingresar y nos demoramos en la detención, algo se trabó y cuando salí estaba detrás de Valtteri. Sabía que sus gomas eran muy nuevas así que me dispuse a esperar, dejando todo bien para intentarlo en las últimas diez. Allí sí, sus gomas ya no estaban tan bien, y pude superarlo. Obviamente ser segundo no es lo que quería, pero fufe lo que pude conseguir..”
Respecto al toque con Bottas…
“Me sorprendió que mi auto no sufriera. Me pegó de atrás así que no supe muy bien que había pasado. En un giro me dí cuenta que mi auto estaba OK y que podía seguir con el plan de carrera.
Kimi, quien tuvo un momento tierno con su hijo antes del podio, estuvo como siempre, bastante inexpresivo en la conferencia.
“Fue lo mejor que me era posible. No comencé bien, y tenemos que mejorar en eso. Alcancé a Bottas tras la primera parada, pero no había chance de sobrepaso así que mi chance fue parar nuevamente para volver a cargar y al menos conseguí el tercer puesto. Esto está lejos del ideal, pero me llevo los puntos y a pensar en la próxima carrera…”
Q: (Livio Oricchio – Globoesporte.com) A question for Lewis. You said that Friday is normally different to Sunday. But on Friday you didn’t use the blankets on your rear tyres. You get out from the pits very slowly, I believe not to heat the rear tyres…
LH: I didn’t use what?
The electrical blanket on your rear tyres.
LH: When
Friday. We saw it on the TV.
LH: We always use blankets.
Also leaving the pits very slow…
LH: You can’t drive these tyres from stone cold. Just so you know. So they are always in the blankets but they might take them out earlier than..
Where I want to arrive is that you have many problems with the ultrasoft tyres. The first stint you were on ultrasoft, the track was 59 degrees, 35 the air, and you had incredible performance, everything exactly the opposite to Friday. Can you make a comment; you changed the car, you understood what was going wrong?
LH: Well, from Friday to Saturday I made a big car change. The balance that I steered towards, I made a big change in P1, because I was uncomfortable with the balance. It’s difficult to make change in P1 because you have to wait for the track to come to you rather than chase the set-up. I straight away made a big change and I tried to pursue that direction but by the time I got to the end of P2 I realised it wasn’t the right direction so I had to pull back and go another way. We had a bit of running in P3 but the car still wasn’t perfect. And then it rained. I didn’t make any changes but I knew that Valtteri had had good P2 running and we weren’t too far off in the direction that we ended. All the learning you do on a Friday, it wasn’t perfect, the way you drive, the way you use the tyres, then you come back on Sunday and you have to bring you’re ‘a-game’. Friday is not usually the day I bring my ‘a-game’. In terms of the tyres, the ultrasoft lasted a lot better than I thought today. I did struggle in P2 but, as I said, I was on a different set-up. The long run was quite good and then we went to the soft and I struggled, as where in P2 I was really good on the soft. So it was completely different. I struggled at the beginning and then we got through some traffic and then I moved a lot of switches around and eventually was able to balance the car and then it was OK. After that I was able to do some decent times and pull the gap. I knew that at some point I’d need to pull the gap to these while they were still behind Valtteri. I knew the strategy that Valtteri was on it was highly unlikely that he was going to make it last and when I pulled away from the grid I knew that Sebastian had been on the soft tyre. We knew that it would also make it very difficult to win, even for me, so that’s why the gap was really important. I definitely don’t think the team expected me to be able to eke out my first stint to lap 30 or whatever it was. I think they were a little bit too optimistic I would say on the other side to make those tyres go that far. Even for me towards the end of my stint my tyres were on the way out. I probably could have done another 10 laps or 15 laps on them before they were completely dead. Their pace was obviously good but fortunately I’d done enough by then.
Q: (Scott Mitchell – Autosport) For Lewis and Sebastian. At the beginning of the race on alternative tyre strategies, it looked like at one point the race might be swinging more towards Seb, especially when Valtteri pitted and Seb looked like he was going to jump him. So obviously the race went in a different direction. Could I get your comment on how the race changed and also how it impacts the momentum of your respective championship campaigns.
LH: The tyres converge. If you draw a line of the tyre life you’ve got the ultrasoft which starts quickest and it drops off at a certain point and there’s a crossover between the soft and the ultrasoft and then there’s the medium which is way off, it’s a terrible tyre. So past, kind of like, I think somewhere around lap eight, the soft tyres going to be faster than the ultrasoft – but I was able to… I was taking it quite easy on my tyres at the beginning. I was able to get that gap to Valtteri. I think it was to something like eight seconds. By the time he had pitted, and Sebastian had got clean air, then I was able to react to the times that he was putting in. So we were matching times, which, as I said, the team and we definitely didn’t expect. Because, as I said, there’s usually that crossover – but I was able to match his times for a good period of time and that’s really what made the race. In terms of how it affects our championship, I mean, last year, I don’t know if we were leading at this point of last year, but last year I think we had… maybe we felt like we were a little bit stronger than we were compared to this year. This year we all know that Ferrari really do have the upper hand pace-wise but I think all around, performance-wise, in terms of strategy and… y’know, because to win a championship is not just about speed, it’s about how you manage things, the strategy calls you make, mistakes, all these different things all weigh up. I think, as a whole, we have hopefully done a slightly better job up until now. So, we’ve got work to do, we’ve got things to improve, we’ve got performance to bring moving forwards. We’ve got to try and catch them – but we’ve got to continue to keep rising with all the other elements, which allows us to beat the Ferraris when they don’t bring their A game.
Sebastian?
SV: Yeah. In the first stint, I had a good start, obviously. We knew we had to try to do something different today. I think, as it turned out, probably Valtteri was taking it too easy and obviously, Lewis was able to pull away comfortably. Then, I think, looking back, despite the hot temperatures and so on, I think the ultrasoft worked probably better than we all expected. Obviously we tried to do something different with the soft and yeah, the fact that the ultrasoft lasted very well in the beginning, like Lewis’ pace showed, and also at the end for me, the tyres felt like new once I was ahead of Valtteri, even though I spent so many laps in traffic, showed that I think the ultrasoft worked better. So, that didn’t help to close the gap but I think we did what we could. We effectively passed Valtteri for P2 but then I think I got a bit unlucky with the traffic and lost a couple of seconds, and then obviously we had that little issue at the pitstop, so we ended up coming out behind – and then it was a different race. For sure we knew from the start that qualifying, where we qualified, we tried to do something different, I was happy to do that and I think the pace showed today that we were good. I think if you compare the stint on the soft to the other cars, obviously we were different fuel loads and mirrored strategy but was very good. So, I don’t know. As we’ve seen this year the pendulum seems to swing once this side, once that side, obviously y’know if it’s like this, consistency is the key. Scoring points. I didn’t do myself a favour last week but I think it’s part of racing. Stuff happens. Compared to last year, we lost the championship I think because our car wasn’t quick enough to be a match in the final part of the season, despite what happened with the DNFs. So I hope that this year, and I think this year has shown so far that our car is more efficient, our car is stronger and still has a lot of potential to unleash – so I’m quite confident with what’s sitting in the pipeline that we can improve . So, we’ll see. Should be an exciting second part of the year.
Q: (Heikki Kulta – Turun Sanomat) Kimi, this is your ninth podium in Hungary. That’s more than you have anywhere else. Does that mean that you have more good races here than anywhere else?
KR: I don’t know. It doesn’t really feel like a very good race here, being in third place. I think we had very good speed but obviously what happened yesterday and after the start, we never really were able to use our speed when we were on our own, catching-up. But, y’know, apart from that, you are kind of offset in the position and you know you are going to get stuck once you catch up with them. Obviously it worked out kind of OK because we were both… at the beginning I was giving a bit of a hard time for Valtteri and then Seb obviously, so they never had freedom to slow down and take care of their tyres. And there have been some issues and it paid off, so we both gained one place. But yeah, apart from that it was fun to push because the tyres, at least on my side because I stopped twice, they lasted well and I was able to go full speed. So that was fun. But the end result, doesn’t really feel like a happy finish but y’know, as a team we scored decent points and I think we have a few things to improve and I’m sure we have all the speed to be higher up – but we need to tidy up a few things. I think which way you look it depends if it’s good or bad. I don’t think it’s a disaster but it could be better, for sure.
Q: (Andrew Benson – BBC Sport) Sebastian, you had well over a pitstop’s advantage over Valtteri for the best part of ten laps – but you delayed the pitstop, presumably because you were worried about the ultras. Did you wait too long? Was that a mistake. And for Lewis, how to you feel about going into the gap with more than a win’s advantage?
SV: Well, obviously something didn’t go as we planned. It was good that we were faster on an older tyre than Valtteri and pulled a gap. Then I think it’s a bit difficult to foresee the traffic and – knowing how well you go through traffic or not – and in that case I lost quite a lot. So that was one. Then the pitstop, as I explained, but yeah, I think looking back at the race, Lewis’ stint in the first part of the race with the ultrasofts, as I said, Lewis mentioned a crossover close to ten laps. I think the ultrasoft was a lot stronger in the race than it was on Friday, and then what we expected going on. You soft-of know but you don’t know. Obviously Lewis’ information, they don’t call us and say ‘our tyres still look good – you can come in earlier.’ That’s not how it works. And obviously the worst that can happen is that you come in earlier, you gain the position and then you fall apart at the end. You don’t want to do that. I think what we did was OK. But then, as it turned out, with the circumstances and so on, we obviously lost out and we came out behind. Surely, that didn’t help. I think without that it would have been a much more relaxed last part of the race, probably hunting down Lewis, but with the gap that he had, I think it would have been difficult to catch – and then it’s a completely different story, especially around here to overtake. So I think we could have done the catching bit but not really the overtake, so, in the end it doesn’t change much to the final result. Just that it was a bit more work than coming out ahead.
LH: Well, as I said, I really could only have dreamed that we would be in the position that we are in right now, considering all factors and based on our pure performance, where we stand compared to the Ferraris. Really happy, going into the break, particularly with back-to-back wins. I think that boost will last a long time for our team and it’s encouraging for everyone so I’m excited for the break. I think everyone has worked so hard; even for you guys, travelling around the world, it’s tough on everyone so it’s probably going to be good to be able to spend time with family and friends and back off and then the second half is always exciting, it’s always intense, particularly when we go to the long long hauls. Second half is usually… it gets a bit better on our side so we will go and prepare and make sure we come back even stronger.