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Here is the transcript of the post 2023 Canadian Grand Prix track interviews and press conference featuring Lewis Hamilton!
TRACK INTERVIEWS
(Conducted by Jenson Button)
Q: This has always been a pretty special track for you. Not the result you want, entirely, but you’re working hard out there.
Lewis HAMILTON: Yeah, honestly it’s been a great weekend for us. I think we are slowly chipping away. I think the Astons took a little bit of a step ahead this weekend when they added the upgrades but we’re working on bringing some more moving forwards. But to just have this consistency and to be up on the podium here in Montréal, which is such an incredible city and we’ve got such a great crowd here every single year without fail. So big thank you to everyone here.
Q: You seem to be in a really good place. You know, there’s progress being made with the team, you yourself giving it your all. It’s such a pleasure for us all to see it on track. What are the areas you still think you need to improve to really take it to Aston and then finally Red Bull?
LH: Yeah, I mean, well, firstly, quite an honour to be up there with two world champions. I was really excited to be third and just trying to be in that mix. But unfortunately, we didn’t have the pace today. I think where we struggle… I mean, we knew that this weekend, this wouldn’t be our strongest circuit, as we struggle in the lower-speed corners particularly. And that’s really where I was losing to Fernando and to Max, just on traction out of Turn 2, out of pretty much every corner. We’ve got a lot of work to do just to add rear downforce to the car and a little bit more efficiency, but we’re chipping away as I said, and I do believe we will get there at some stage. Max was a little bit gone, but I think our pace is a little bit closer today, so we are going in the right direction.
PRESS CONFERENCE
Q: Lewis coming to you now. Very well done, your third podium of 2023, your second in a row. How much satisfaction did this afternoon give you?
LH: It’s been a great weekend. Very difficult with the conditions but loving being in the car now with the car in a better window and a bit more on the right track. And for us to be up there, having battles with Fernando in the Aston, and being just on the second row, it’s been great. And to be on the podium, two races in a row is really, really fantastic for us. We were also running fourth in Monaco, so we’re definitely getting closer. And it’s going to be a battle of development, I guess, over the rest of the season. I reckon Max’s team are already working on next year’s car, so we need to take our eye a little bit off the ball and focus on next year also but yeah, happy to be up there.
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Q: Tell us a little bit more about your battle with Fernando. Having followed the Aston up close for so many laps, where were the differences in your cars?
LH: Low speed, rear end. His rear end… I mean, I got to experience being behind Max and his rear is very strong. His rear end doesn’t move and he pulls ten car lengths probably on me just coming out of the corners. I think Fernando’s very, very strong on the brakes, and particularly very quick through Turn 10 and Turn 2. Those places, he was taking huge chunks out of me.
QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR
Q: (Jesús Balseiro – Diario AS) Question for the three of you. What’s the feeling when you share a flat-out race together, the only three World Champions on this grid, especially because the three of you haven’t had a fight together for the last ten years – or maybe Max and Fernando never. What are you feeling during this kind of race?
LH: Not much more to add, but I agree with Fernando, it’s a privilege to be up here fighting these two who’ve done incredible in their careers. And this is quite an iconic top three. I don’t know if there’s been a top three like this ever before. I don’t believe there has. But yeah, so hopefully there’ll be more and hopefully, as Fernando said, there’s a lot of respect between us as we were able to race so closely and trust in one another. I’m really hoping at some stage we have more of a level playing field in our cars, and then we’ll have a much more exciting race, I think in the future.
Q: (Stu Cowan – Montréal Gazette) Question for Lewis. With Red Bull winning every race so far this season Lewis, does a sense of frustration set in that you simply can’t catch Max in the car that he’s driving?
LH: Beyond. It’s not a frustration anymore, if it ever was. It’s… you know how it is, and you know what you’re faced with, and there’s nothing I can do about their amazing performance. It’s likely that they will win every race, moving forwards, this year, unless the Astons and us put a lot more performance on the cars, or their car doesn’t finish. It’s not easy with the regulations to find the amount of performance that they have, advantage-wise. They’ve got to be 30 points upon us in certain points through the lap and we’ve got some work to do. But it’s not that it’s frustrating, I just, as I said, look forward to… I’m happy to firstly be back in the mix and I’m just hoping at some stage we can have it all a little bit more level so we can get back to some of the good races we had back in 2021. And to have all three of us in a super-tight battle would be sick.
Q: (Pedro Fermin Flores – TheGodFlores) And last one for you, Lewis. Please ask to Fernando: “Fernando, be always true and honest, what it means, the words ‘copy, leave it to me?’”
LH: I don’t know what the question was, I didn’t understand it. I didn’t understand if I’m honest.
Q: (Pedro Fermin Flores – TheGodFlores) What the engineer said to him, that you were catching, you were under two seconds and then Fernando said ‘copy, leave it to me’. ‘Leave it to me’.
He will do the work to give you, not catching him. Leave it to me.
LH: I don’t get what the point is. He’s a multi-World Champion, so he knows what he’s doing.
Q: (Pedro Fermin Flores – TheGodFlores) Is it like a joke?
LH: Ah… I don’t get it.
Q: (Célini Ehret – F1only.fr) This is Father’s Day today. We know your father plays a very important role in your career, especially when you go karting. What is your comment regarding the influence of your father and your success of your career respectively?
LH: Yeah, same as these guys. Happy Father’s Day to my Dad, I already posted about it this morning. He sacrificed everything for me to be here today so I continue to try and make him proud. I know how hard it was for him with everything that he faced because I was right there with him. But the ultimate dream is always to be like your father. I want to be like my father.
Q: (Jake Boxall-Legge – Autosport) Lewis, now you’ve had a couple of races with the new Mercedes upgrades, can you just explain how it feels in the car now pre- and post-upgrades? And secondly, what’s next on your shopping list because you mentioned the superior rear end of the two guys next to you? What’s next beyond that as well?
LH: In truth, it doesn’t feel a huge difference to the beginning of the year. There are some elements of the car which do feel different and obviously with the upgrade but it’s just simply just have a little bit more downforce on the car. But the characteristics of the car are very, very similar to what we had earlier on in the year and so we need to… for the future, for the next year’s car, you need to take a lot of these different things off and change them for sure. It’s definitely not the car that… characteristic-wise the car that’s going to be able to beat the Red Bull just yet. And so we’ve got to work on that. For example, it was very bumpy, this track, and I think everyone was struggling but our car was very stiff. But I think we were all struggling with the stiffness of our cars. But today was bumpy. That’s the one that thing that… I would say that’s something I dislike most about this generation of cars, right? Back in the day was smooth down the straight. I mean, your generation…
Max VERSTAPPEN: It’s, a big difference to what ’16, ’17?
Source: FIA.com
