Lewis Hamilton may not have been able to overtake Esteban Ocon at the 2022 Japanese Grand Prix, but admitted he had a blast racing around Suzuka.
Lewis Hamilton was itching to go racing in Japan, as the world sat there waiting for race conditions to improve and the green light from the Race Directors.
He said on social media: “Let’s get going… give it a shot. We’ll know immediately if it’s drivable or not,” adding over the team radio once he hit the track: “Pretty good.”
The Briton was locked in a race long fight with Alpine’s Esteban Ocon for fourth, but the Frenchman did not put a foot wrong, keeping the #44 Mercedes at bay.
Mercedes lacked straight-line speed
“Once we got racing today, I had a blast out there – it was so tough in the conditions, hard to see and that’s exactly how motor racing should be; a real challenge for us all,” Hamilton said after the race.
“I wish we had been able to go longer and do more laps for the fans who waited so patiently, but we ran to time and were beginning to lose the light,” he added.
“In terms of my race, I tried everything I could against Esteban but like we saw yesterday, we were just too slow in a straight line. As soon as I pulled out of the tow, he was able to pull away from me, and I just couldn’t get past even though we had a big pace advantage.
“I was trying every line and got so close, but he drove very well and didn’t make any mistakes, so that was the maximum we could do today. Now we need to pick the bones out of these two races and learn our lessons to maximise the points we can score in the final four races,” Hamilton maintained after finishing fifth.
The seven-time Formula 1 World Champion finally commended his 2021 Title rival Max Verstappen on winning his second F1 Crown in a row.
“Finally, congratulations to Max – he’s done exactly the job he needed to do to win his second title,” he said. “We know what our problems are with this car, and I believe we have the team to come back stronger next season.”
George Russell, finished the race eighth, and reported some brake problems similar to those he faces in Singapore a week earlier. He was also outqualified by Hamilton for the second race in a row.
Russell: We need to review what we could have done better today
“We need to review and see what we could have done better today,” he said. “I think we had a stronger car than the result reflects, and that we could have been P6 today.
“I think that stacking in the pit lane cost me positions, and that made it a frustrating afternoon, so we need to look at it and see what the other options were. I made some good overtakes after that – but it was a case of trying to recover what we had lost.
“It was a strange afternoon overall,” Russell went on. “The conditions at the beginning were impossible, not with the grip but in terms of visibility and the amount of spray this generation of cars generates, and we need to learn the right lessons from the incident with the recovery vehicle on track while we were running behind the Safety Car.
“Overall, this has been a difficult double-header for us, and we’ve not scored the points we should have – so we need to regroup, focus on the final four races, and try to extract everything from the car we have under us,” Russell lamented.
“And of course, congratulations to Max on his second championship; the outcome has been clear for a while, but he and Red Bull have done an exceptional job this year,” he concluding congratulating Verstappen.