Monaco GP: Lewis Hamilton shares his assessment of new Mercedes W14 upgrades after Practice Two
May 27, 2023
Monte Carlo [Monaco], May 27 : Friday marked the beginning of Monaco GP 2023, Mercedes debuted their long-awaited car upgrades ahead of the race.
As per Sky Sports, after Friday's practice seven-time World Drivers' Champion, Lewis Hamilton gave his opinion on the new upgrades after testing them on the tracks during practice.
These new upgrades included highly visible work on W14, a new floor as well as new suspensions. Mercedes was planning to narrow the gap between their rivals with the new upgrades.
With the new upgrades, Hamilton was third fastest during the opening sessions of the practice. He finished sixth in Practice Two, but his teammate George Russell struggled and only managed to finish in the 12th position.
Hamilton felt positive due to the update but still is unsure if the upgrades are enough to bridge the gap for pole position in one of the most important races in Monaco.
"I have generally had an amazing day. I really enjoyed driving today. It is not the place to ultimately test an upgrade but the car was generally feeling good," said Hamilton according to Sky Sports.
"A bit of a shame we were not as close as I would have hoped at the end of the session but definitely felt the improvements and we have just got to keep chipping away at it and see if we can squeeze any more juice out of the car," Hamilton added.
The seven-time champion accepted that there is still more room for improvement as Mercedes is trying to catch up with their opponents and fight for pole positions as well as podiums.
"There is [one area where seeing most improvement] and it is very clear where the lack of performance is for me and so we will talk about that in the debrief, put our heads together and try and figure out how we can do that within what we have and hopefully this gives us a platform to build on moving forwards," Hamilton said.
"In P1, I thought maybe we were looking pretty good but we are always looking pretty good in P1 for some reason. In [the second session] we were close to half a second off and maybe that could have been three-tenths but I do not think we have half a second in the bag. We will see, we will work on it and see if we can squeeze more out of it tonight." he concluded.
