Hamilton ‘finally’ feeling on top of his Ferrari after promising United States GP

Lewis Hamilton expressed relief after a strong weekend at the United States Grand Prix left him feeling that he has “finally” made a much-needed breakthrough with Ferrari.

The seven-time World Champion may not have achieved his goal of a maiden podium with Ferrari at the Circuit of The Americas, but a pair of fourth place finishes across the Sprint and Grand Prix marked an uptick in performance following a recent dip in results.

“I’m finally feeling like I’m on top of the car,” said Hamilton. “I think we still have some improvements we could make. We can definitely extract more, particularly on my side, because Qualifying wasn’t as good as I had hoped and the start wasn’t great.

“There are always areas to improve, but it’s positive going into the next race, so I hope we can have an even better weekend.”

After dropping back from Lando Norris and Charles Leclerc in the opening stages on Sunday, Hamilton recovered and passed his team mate for third shortly before Leclerc, who had started on soft tyres, pitted.

Going longer relegated Hamilton back to fourth, and he was unable to close the margin for a second time, but a strong team result of third and fourth closed the gap to Mercedes in the Teams’ Championship, leaving the 40-year-old satisfied with his work.

“We can definitely take a lot of positives,” he added. “Just the way we have extracted points this weekend – given we haven’t upgraded the car, we are still somehow just there or thereabouts.

“I got a bad start, managed to still get a good Turn 1, which then recovered the start. I was kind of in the fight at the beginning and got Charles before his stop but lost a bit of time there to Lando.

“After my stop, I came out so far behind, so the strategy wasn’t ideal, but a perfect result in terms of points for the team.”