Belgian Grand Prix – Lewis Hamilton has rejected the idea that he is questioning the legality of the Ferraris following his comments immediately after the race.
The Mercedes driver finished second to Sebastian Vettel in the Belgian Grand Prix following an opening-lap overtake on the Kemmel straight.
He was unable to respond to the pace of Vettel throughout the remainder of the race and told post-race interviewer Martin Brundle that Ferrari had “a few trick things on the car”.
However, when he was asked if he believed the Ferraris were running anything illegal on their cars, he responded: “No, we all have trick things on our cars. Trick is just a word for something special, I guess.
“I don’t know what’s on their car so I couldn’t tell you either way.”
“I don’t mean anything to it so please don’t read into it and please don’t twist my words and say that I say they’re doing anything illegal because they’re not.
“They just outperformed us today and we’ve got to work harder, but there are things that they have on the car that we might not have on the car and vice versa and we’ve got to try and find out what and improve on that. That’s it.”
When asked about the performance differences between the top two teams, Hamilton added that he believed most of the remaining tracks will suit the Ferrari more than the Mercedes.
“I think they seem to have it where there are straights. You’ve got Mexico, long straights, they will have the advantage there. They generally have the advantage at places like Singapore.
“The next race, with this kind of performance they have on straights, we might struggle to match them there.
“We gave it everything we had today. We were, generally, often quicker in the middle sector in qualifying but for some reason, I think in the race even then, I couldn’t keep up. For them to pull over a second gap, that’s some serious pace they had today so we’ve just got to keep working hard and keep pushing.”
