Lewis Hamilton qualified fifth in front of the tifosi on the Saturday of the Italian Grand Prix, but while his five-place grid penalty pushes him down to 10th for the race start tomorrow, giving a tow to team-mate Charles Leclerc was ruled out by Ferrari.
The Scuderia appeared to miss an opportunity as Leclerc put himself on the second row beside Oscar Piastri, who qualified third. Instead of asking his seven-time champion team-mate to provide the Monegasque with a tow to potentially boost him up the grid, the team decided against it, letting the drivers fight for themselves at the Monza circuit.
When asked whether it should have been a conversation point, Hamilton rejected the idea.
“Do I feel that they should have? No, it’s not something I ever did in any of my other teams, and I’m sacrificing one of the drivers, and I’ve already got a five-place penalty, so points-wise I needed to be as high as I could,” he explained.
The penalty, stemming from a yellow-flag infringement during a reconnaissance lap ahead of the Dutch Grand Prix, sees him drop by five places, starting beside two-time champion Fernando Alonso for tomorrow’s race start. Despite this, Hamilton is finally starting to see light at the end of the tunnel after a difficult season so far.
Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari
Photo by: Bryn Lennon / Formula 1 / Getty Images
“I’m happy with the progress through the weekend,” he said. “I think the progress from last weekend and then carried that through this week. So I’ve been relatively happy with the car, the progress from P1, the car felt great. I think that’s where it felt the best and then we went into P2, we made changes into qualifying, and I think it was the most we could get from it.
“Obviously, with the penalty and everyone being so close, it’s going to be tough to overtake,” he continued. “But we’ve got a good top speed, so I’m hoping that I can try to make up some ground. I think that [I] probably need a good start, a good first lap, a good strategy. We’ll go away now and try to figure out what we can do to try to optimise everything.”
This weekend sees Hamilton’s first race in red at Ferrari’s home race. He’s looking forward to putting on a good race for the sea of tifosi chanting for him and Leclerc.
“So far it’s been incredible. It’s been amazing. I don’t really know what other word I can come up with. Showing up already on Wednesday at the factory and then driving from there to Milan and seeing so many people just on a Wednesday event.
“And then coming into the weekend, they’re just everywhere. It’s a post-event, hiding behind trees, you go through this park, they’re just, I don’t know. There’s so many of them.
“And you come out, you see them, you leave the track, they’re on both sides all the way, as far as you can go. It’s pretty incredible to see the love that the people in this country have for this team. There’s nothing else like it.”
The driver currently sits sixth in the drivers’ standings behind Leclerc, who leads him by 42 points.
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