Hamilton left with 'massive headache' due to COTA bumps

Lewis Hamilton was left with a headache as a result of the bumps in the track at the Circuit of The Americas through practice for the United States Grand Prix on Friday, with the Briton calling it “the bumpiest track by far that I have ever been on”.

Hamilton was quick to report a number of severe bumps in the circuit after completing his installation laps in FP1 at COTA, and the onboard cameras from the cars showed many struggling to negotiate them.

Hamilton said that he was “not feeling good” as a result of the bumps that left him with a headache before changes were made to his car setup ahead of FP2.

“It was the bumpiest track by far that I have ever been on. I had such a headache,” Hamilton said.

“The bumps are not such a bad thing in some places because it just adds characteristics, it adds that character to a circuit. So I’m not a fan of completely smooth circuits.

“But this one is like massive, massive bumps, and the problem for us is that we don’t have much suspension. Our suspension moves like this much, so it’s usually your butt on the floor, and your spine takes all the compression, so I was feeling horrible.

“I had a massive headache after P1, I had to lay down, I was not feeling great. We made some changes to make it a little bit better for the second one so it wasn’t feeling as bad through P2, so fingers crossed.”

Hamilton said that drivers would have to adjust their braking points to negotiate the bumps in the circuit, but was hopeful the track would make alterations in the future.

“Some of those [bumps], how they were before, that’s a good characteristic to have, because it makes it quite difficult, you have to brake a bit earlier, you don’t want to brake on the bump,” Hamilton said.

“Today’s been pretty hardcore. I’m sure they’ll make changes for the future, but we have to drive around it, everyone is in the same boat.

“When you look at the onboards, the Ferraris just sail through. I don’t know if they run higher aero or they have a softer suspension, I’m not quite sure.

“But we’ll just deal with it, we’ll keep working on it. I might have to put a pillow in my seat or something!”

Additional reporting by Julianne Cerasoli.