Hamilton pinpoints the areas which he wants to improve for the remainder of the Monaco weekend
Having shown an encouraging performance on the opening day at the Monaco Grand Prix, seven-time F1 champion Lewis Hamilton has revealed that areas he wants to improve for the remainder of the weekend.
On the back of their home race at Imola, Ferrari's Charles Leclerc set the fastest time in both free practice sessions at his own home round. The second session saw the fastest times and in this one, Lewis Hamilton was third just over a tenth off his team-mate’s time.
Despite setting the benchmark on Friday, there was one scary moment for Lecerc, at the start of the first session when he was unable to avoid running into Lance Stroll in the Aston Martin, who had suddenly moved across in front of the Monegasque at the hairpin. The Monegasque's SF-25 sustained a broken front wing, but he was able to continue to rack up laps in the opening session.
In the second session, Leclerc set a benchmark of 1m11.355s while his team-mate Hamilton did a 1m11.460s. The final part of the hour saw both drivers run with a heavier fuel load in race trim, using the tyres from the start of the session, the Hards for Leclerc and the mediums for Hamilton.
Expanding on his experiences on the opening day at Monte Carlo, Hamilton said: "It's been a positive day. This track is always a challenge but in the best way, and experiencing it in a Ferrari makes it even more special.
"We completed our programme and gathered a lot of useful data which we’ll continue working through tomorrow. The pace felt promising overall; however, there’s still time to find. I’m getting a good feeling from the car and the balance is not bad, so I’m looking forward to building on this as the weekend goes on.
As for the areas he wants to improve for Saturday, the Briton noted: "It went smoothly, FP1 was still a bit of a challenge with traffic and everything, FP2 was much, much better. I have a little bit of time to find, Charles was still very quick but otherwise, a good session."
"There is more to find in my driving, in lines, in my braking. I got one tenth for example just in Turn 1. So there are bits here and there, just throughout the lap. But the car, there are subtle changes we need to make but I will not be making many changes at all," concluded Hamilton.
