For Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari an Azerbaijan GP that looked promising on Friday gradually fell apart, culminating in a lowly eighth place, and a storm in a teacup over a team order mishap.
Nevertheless overall it was a good weekend for Hamilton, who at times – especially when he was fastest overall in FP2 – was showing signs of really coming to terms with a car that he’s been fighting all season.
He went into qualifying believing that he was genuinely in the fight for pole, an indication of how comfortable he felt in the SF-25.
Alas setup changes for Saturday didn’t go in his favour, and he found himself caught out in qualifying as the only driver to commit to soft tyres for the whole of the complicated and interrupted Q1 and Q2 sessions. It didn’t work out, and he was left stuck in P12.
Like poleman Verstappen and two other drivers ahead, he opted for hard tyres at the start, planning to run long and benefit from a safety car or red flag.
He passed Fernando Alonso at the start, and then got Isack Hadjar, and thus made some progress. After his late stop he found himself in P9 behind team mate Charles Leclerc on fresher tyres, and he was given the opportunity to go past and have a go at attacking Lando Norris, who in turn had Yuki Tsunoda and Liam Lawson up ahead.
The usual protocol in such situations is that if you can’t move forward you give the place back before the flag. Lewis tried to do that at the end of the last lap, but he misjudged his retardation and the position of the finish line, and crossed it just in front of Leclerc.
Usually this year finishing a race in the wheel tracks of a McLaren would signal a good performance, but he conceded that P8 was nothing to get too excited about.
“Definitely not where we want to be,” said Hamilton when I asked about his race. “Obviously a disappointing result at the end of the day. But I did go forward from 12th, which was positive.
“I had a good start, and I think my pace was generally good. I was flat out, I was definitely much better, much happier in the car. It was difficult today to close up on the cars ahead. They’re very fast.
“Clearly, qualifying is very important, and we missed out on that. Look at the Williams, where they qualified and finished. But there’s lots of positives to take from it, and definitely bits to draw from the weekend.”
He admitted that his strategy hadn’t played out as planned, while hinting at frustration over decisions taken during the weekend, and not for the first time this season.
“I was going long in the hope there would be some sort of safety car, and there was nothing,” he said. “So that was unfortunate. It’s happened a lot this year, we’re just not seeing any incidents. And everyone’s obviously in that DRS train for quite some time.
“But also I think our setup choice at the end, I think, wasn’t great, and obviously our procedure, our execution in qualifying was not great, which put us in that position. So to be fighting for eighth and ninth is not what we want.
“If we had optimised the weekend, I think it would have been a slightly different day, maybe fourth and fifth.”
He was at least in the fight, and his pass on Hadjar was pretty decent, although he still wasn’t entirely happy.
“I think there’s still some improvements to make in terms of how aggressive I can be,” he noted. “The car has been quite snappy, so I’m still not 100% committed and confident on the braking when I’m attacking on the brakes.
“In the last race I was, but in this race, I didn’t feel so much, with the setup that we ended up having.”
What then of the botched finish? Leclerc wasn’t happy that he didn’t get his place back, but it was more the principle than any concern over trading P9 for his rightful P8.
“Obviously I was quicker, but Charles was gracious to let me by,” said Hamilton. “At the end I got the message really late on, and I was like zoned in on the car in front of me. Even though there was like, zero, 0.001 chance of passing, I was still hopeful.
“And basically, I did lift on the straight and did actually brake, but he missed it by like four-tenths, so that was a misjudgement for myself. So I’ll apologise to Charles. At the end of the day, it’s eighth and ninth. But it won’t happen again.”
The races continue to count down, and Hamilton has seven weekends left in which to log his first elusive GP podium for Ferrari.
“It’s kind of crazy, because we’ve made progress, yet we’ve had results like this through the last few races. But it’s felt like progress. So I think we’re able to do a good weekend, a good result. Just keep at it.
“As I said, if we qualify better, we’re going to be in a much better position to race. I mean, I would give anything for an upgrade!
“Obviously, we don’t have that, we’re focussed on next year’s car, so we just have to do better in optimising and execution.”