Lewis Hamilton will give it “absolutely everything” after “miserable” Azerbaijan GP
"Then all of a sudden it just slipped through our fingers and it was miserable for the rest of the weekend."
Lewis Hamilton is hopeful of bouncing back from a “miserable” F1 race in Baku at this weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix.
After starting from the pit lane due to an engine change, Hamilton could only recover to finish ninth.
The seven-time world champion only scored points in Baku due to a collision on the penultimate lap between Carlos Sainz and Sergio Perez.
Hamilton is prepared to “give it absolutely everything” at this weekend’s race at the Marina Bay Street Circuit as he channels a positive mindset.
Hamilton told F1TV: “I think these past couple of days, having to reflect on last weekend. It started off so positive, I was in the factory and doing the sim, which I don’t do a lot, preparing and arrived and first lap I was on it.
“Then all of a sudden it just slipped through our fingers and it was miserable for the rest of the weekend. You can put it down to so many different things. We all care so much. Everyone is working so, so , so hard. So I think more so coming into this weekend, we’re going to give it absolutely everything.
“Whether it goes well or not, it is what it is. We’re in that period of time I think in the season where we’ve just got to give absolutely everything and if it doesn’t go well, not necessarily not giving a thing, not letting it beat us down and just trying to stay positive. We’ve got seven more shots at it, so we’re going to bowl our hardest.”
Hamilton was left to rue a component which wasn’t built correctly on his Mercedes.
After the race on Sunday, Hamilton revealed that only after qualifying the team wasn’t quite right with his car.
Reflecting on that issue, he said: “There’s a load of different reasons. Earlier in the car, it’s been through making relatively big changes. Changing the mechanical balance through high and low-speed, for example, by a good chunk.
“Or you do big camber set-up changes, or you change the front suspension or rear suspension heave unit. The last race, I was like ‘I love the car, don’t change it too much’.
“They were really, really small changes that I made but one of the components did the complete opposite of what it was supposed to do. And we didn’t find out until the end of the day. I got in the car on Saturday morning and I was like ‘I’ve got massive understeer, this doesn’t feel normal’. And they were like, ‘yeah the car it should be fine, we’ve set it up normally’. It’s not until the end of the day you find out it’s not the case.”
