Lewis Hamilton: The car has become more efficient

After the results of Friday’s training sessions in Imola, the Mercedes drivers ended up in the top five – Lewis Hamilton showed the fourth result, George Russell – the fifth result. Both believe that this was made possible by the technical innovations the team had prepared for the seventh stage of the season.

Lewis Hamilton (4th): “Not a bad start to the weekend. We worked productively and were able to check how the car behaves on tires from all three compounds. It feels like the balance is right, and that’s good. It seems that we are already much closer to the leaders than before, but we have to wait and see how things turn out tomorrow.

I am very grateful to everyone working at the team base who have made great efforts to prepare a whole range of technical innovations for this weekend. We see that the car has improved in terms of efficiency, and the results on track reflect this.

Regarding the episode that took place during the session when I hindered Max Verstappen, I drove that lap at a leisurely pace and thought the track around me was clear, but suddenly his car appeared next to me. In the end it was my fault. I even tried to apologize to him, but he wasn’t in the best mood.”

George Russel (5th): “The car worked great today, Lewis and I felt comfortable in the W15. It seems like we are more or less competitive and already a little closer to the front row than in Miami. In tomorrow’s qualifying we will find out exactly what positions we are in.

It seems that McLaren and Ferrari are very strong, but let’s hope we can find additional reserves of speed and further close the gap. However, the difference in results is, as always, minimal.

Our team has done an excellent job of pushing out technical updates as quickly as possible. We certainly feel like we’ve taken a step forward. It’s great to see the team fighting despite the previous few races being difficult.”