Lewis Hamilton says his first Italian Grand Prix as a Ferrari driver has left him motivated to work as hard as possible to achieve his dream of winning for the Scuderia at Monza.
Ferrari always enjoys massive support at its home race, with the tifosi out in huge numbers from the start of the weekend. Hamilton was part of a large fan event in central Milan earlier in the week and spent some time after the race on the pit wall engaging with the crowd on the pit straight, and he says the special experience lived up to expectations.
“I think it was everything you could ever hope for,” Hamilton said. “Of course you want to be fighting at the front, but it was just unbelievable to be on the receiving end. I mean, it’s just Ferrari all the way around the track. You see the pit straight now, it’s as far as the eye can see.
“It’s a dream to drive for this team and I’m really just going to work as hard as I can to one day stand on the top of that podium. That’s my dream.”
Hamilton had been competitive all weekend and qualified fifth, one spot behind teammate Charles Leclerc, but had to start tenth due to a grid penalty earned at Zandvoort. Climbing through the field he quickly recovered to sixth but could not get the better of George Russell ahead, and was philosophical about the final result.
“Yeah there was definitely some good overtaking. Tough moving forward, coming from where I was, tenth, [after qualifying fifth] to then try and catch up all these other cars. Sitting in traffic for periods of time, obviously you lose time to the cars up ahead and you eat more of your tires up.
“So I think I’m generally quite happy with the overall performance. And I think think this is as good as we could have got. I think possibly we could have got fifth if we had maybe tried to, if we had undercut Mercedes, but I don’t think that was… we just missed it, I think.”
Team principal Fred Vasseur agreed that Ferrari’s strategic attempts to pass Russell didn’t pay off, with Hamilton having shown the pace to trouble the Mercedes.
“It’s not that the pace dropped,” Vasseur said. “I think we were able to come back at Russell at the end of the first stint. Then we took a bet to extend and try to have a tire advantage at the end, but the degradation was too low and it didn’t work.
“But I think it was the best way to try to overtake Russell on track. Perhaps if I have to do it again, perhaps I would have pitted Lewis a bit earlier, but I think it was the best option to try something different.”
