Hamilton: 'Without Magnussen touch I would have fought with the Red Bulls'
General
- GPblog.com
Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes are having a difficult start to 2022, but little by little the W13 seems to be getting more competitive. Hamilton felt a lot more comfortable in his car thanks to the updates in Spain. It led to a fifth-place and ten extra World Cup points. If it weren't for his incident in the opening stages, he could even have gone for the win in his own opinion.
In the opening stages, Hamilton found himself in a scramble with Kevin Magnussen as the Haas F1 car hit the Mercedes driver Both drivers had to come in for a pit stop and thus fell all the way back to the back of the field. The race directors did not hand out any penalties for the offence. Hamilton fought his way back up to fourth place, but eventually had to reduce speed due to a water leak. It became a P5 in Barcelona.
Hamilton full of confidence
"This is a great sign that we’re going in the right direction," Hamilton was quoted by Sky Sports after the Spanish Grand Prix. "I have no doubt at some stage [we can fight for wins again] because today, if I hadn’t had that, I’d have been fighting with the Red Bulls. So that gives me great hope that at some stage we’ll be fighting for the win.”
Hamilton, meanwhile, has moved up to sixth in the world championship. The Mercedes driver is on 46 points and is 28 World Championship points behind teammate George Russell. The gap to World Cup leader to Max Verstappen is 64 points after 6 of the 22 GPs.