Hamilton on overtaking: Don't hold your breath
Lewis Hamilton feels F1's technical rule changes could have the opposite effect on its target to increase excitement and overtaking opportunities in races.
The Mercedes driver says he found it trickier to follow other F1 cars at Circuit de Catalunya while on track during pre-season testing with the new cars under the 2017 technical regulations.
Despite welcoming changes to shake up F1 along with the introduction of new owners Liberty Media, Hamilton hopes Pirelli can produce tyres with more mechanical grip in a racing situation to compensate for the increased turbulent air kicked up by the new cars.
"The turbulence is easily twice as powerful from the car coming out the back of a car, so that's twice the issue," Hamilton said. "It just magnifies the issue we had before. Hopefully with these tyres, Pirelli have provided a tyre that is reliable and pretty solid. You can do so many laps on these tyres. They're probably the hardest tyres we've driven.
"The engineers and I commented on it before, the issue is exactly the same as it was before. We've got all this downforce so we need more mechanical grip. We need better grip from these bigger tyres and less downforce, where it's gone the other way. Let's hope the racing is fantastic, but don't hold your breath."
Hamilton ended day three of the opening pre-season test seventh overall with a best time of 1m 22.090s having notched up an impressive 95 laps despite red flag stoppages during his afternoon in the Mercedes W08, after taking over from Valtteri Bottas who topped the day with a 1m 19.705s set on ultra-soft tyres.
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