© Jiri Krenek for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd.
Here is the transcript of the post 2024 Las Vegas Grand Prix track interviews and press conference featuring Lewis Hamilton and George Russell!
TRACK INTERVIEWS
(Conducted by Terry Crews and Jenson Button)
Q: There’s no better place to celebrate a big win than Vegas. Any plans tonight?
George RUSSELL: You tell me! I’m sure where you’re going, it’s going to be a good party. So I was planning on flying in a couple of hours, but I’m definitely not getting on that flight. And I’m going to enjoy this evening with all my team. It’s been a dream of a weekend. I don’t know how we’ve been so quick, but I’m just riding this wave right now.
Q: Can you tell us what is special about a night race here in Las Vegas?
GR: Vegas is just a crazy, crazy place. And when you’re driving, you see all of this in the background. I can’t even describe this place. So to get a victory here, pole position, dominant weekend, 1-2 with Lewis as well, we couldn’t have chosen a better place to make this happen.
Q: So George, from the time the lights went out, beautiful start. And we didn’t see you after that. That’s when you know you’ve put on a clinic.
GR: I was just waiting for something to happen. You know, the two races I’ve been on pole before, it’s always been chaos, rain, dry and always something happening, last race in Brazil you know with the red flag. So, I’m like, I feel confident here, I’ve got a good gap but I’m just waiting for something to happen and it didn’t. So I guess luck has turned and yeah just so happy right now.
Q: Congratulations, George. Enjoy Vegas. Lewis, obviously yesterday, it was a tough one to swallow, I’m guessing. You’ve been quick all weekend. But then starting P10, chasing down George at the end, it was fun. We were biting our nails. There was some action out there.
Lewis HAMILTON: That was great. Well, firstly, I’ve got to say a big congratulations to Max, winning the championship, still with several races to go. And if I’d done my job yesterday, it would have been a breeze today. but it’s OK, I had fun coming from the back, coming from 10th and the team did a fantastic job. We don’t know why we were so quick this weekend but that’s the nice. That’s the best the car has ever felt, so I’m grateful to have been a part of getting it to that point.
Q: I do want to ask in regards to the climate in Las Vegas, did that make a difference in your preparation for what you were going to do here?
LH: The climate, it’s just that the race is so late. So you’re going to bed at 5, 6am, waking up and starting your day much later, which is quite difficult. So you don’t get a lot of sun during the day, so that really messes with your rhythm. But otherwise, it’s cold, yeah. And maybe the reason that we did so well is because it’s cold. If we’re in a hot climate, that’s where we struggle the most.
Q: Qatar? Night race?
LH: I mean if the car drives like that in the next couple races then I think we’ll be in a good a good spot to challenge the guys up front. And the championship’s done, so now it’s just all out, fight for the best positions possible.
Q: Enjoy your last two races. It was 10 years to the day yesterday that you won your first championship with Mercedes.
LH: We both looked a lot younger then didn’t we?
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PRESS CONFERENCE
Q: George, what a brilliant pole position for you yesterday and a seamless victory today. It’s been quite a weekend.
GR: Yeah, absolutely. It’s been a real surprise seeing how strong our pace has been and securing the pole yesterday I was so pleased with. And then I think we won the race in stint one. To be honest, stint one was exceptional. And I knew from there on in the only way we would probably lose the victory is if I grained the tyres and opened them up. So it was just a case of managing my pace, managing in the right corners and bringing it home.
Q: And having completed this race distance, do you have a greater understanding of why the car has been so good this weekend?
GR: Yeah, I think so. It’s no secret that we struggle on the bumpy circuits and we have to lift the car quite a lot. We’ve got to make it much softer. And then we’re in a downforce window where we don’t have any. And it’s not that we just suddenly forget how to set the car up. It’s just certain circuits require us to put the car in a window it doesn’t like to be. And on tracks like this where it’s relatively smooth, we can get the car quite low, quite stiff, with little or no bumps around the track, we fly.
Q: So what does this mean for the final two, looking ahead?
GR: I think we’ve got a good shot in Qatar, to be honest. Going into this triple header, I had my sights set on Qatar, even to the point that I wanted to take my freshest engine out and put an old engine in for Vegas, to save my best engine for Qatar. And I’m kind of glad we didn’t do that now.
Q: Quick oner, where’s the party tonight? There was a bit of radio chat.
GR: I don’t know, to be honest. I mean, I don’t party that often. I don’t know where I need to go, but I’ll be going somewhere. This guy walking in will probably have a better idea than me. So where’s the party?
LH: I have no clue, man!
Q: George, final one. Can we get a quick word from you on the job that Max Verstappen has done this year as well?
GR: Yeah, exceptional. I mean, he had a dominant car at the start of the year and he got the wind when he needed to and then genuinely thought he probably wasn’t going to win this championship. And he delivered week in, week out, and got the best result the car was capable of and his rivals didn’t. And, you know, I thought it was going to go right to the wire. And, yeah, he won three (sic) races to go. So, you know, huge congrats to him. We just got to make sure that we get ourselves in that fight. And give him a harder time. Because it’s about time, I think we feel ready to try and take that challenge to the front.
Q: George, very well done today. Thank you very much. Lewis, let’s come to you. What a charge by you today. You had so much pace. How much did you enjoy it, first of all?
LH: I had a great time. When you’re progressing and moving forward, it’s always a great feeling. It felt very much like my old days at Rye House, starting at the back and coming through, so it was great.
Q: Was this the best the car has been this year? Better than Silverstone even?
LH: Honestly, I don’t really remember it. Best of recent [times], of course. We got a really good balance in the car today. It felt a lot better than it was yesterday, particularly Q3 yesterday, but yeah, just phenomenal for the team.
Q: Without that difficult Q3 yesterday, how different might today have been for you?
LH: It doesn’t really matter, really, does it? At the end of the day, George did a great job, did everything he was supposed to do and I’m happy for him and I’m just grateful I could get back up there to support the team with a 1-2.
Q: And do you share George’s optimism that you might be able to carry this pace to Qatar next weekend?
LH: I have no idea. I mean, I don’t think anyone in the team knows why we were as quick as we were this weekend. And everyone will be happy about it. But I think often in the hotter conditions, we struggle more. When we go into two, maybe Qatar is not so bad because it’s a little bit cooler there. And the track is very smooth. So maybe we’ll not be too bad at that track. I think we were OK there last year. Abu Dhabi, maybe less so. But we’ll see.
Q: Alright, Lewis, final one. Can we get a quick word from you on the job that Max has done this year?
LH: He’s done a fantastic job. He’s not made any mistakes and he’s delivered every time and every point he’s supposed to. And him and his team have done the best job, again, fourth year in a row. And it definitely got exciting at one point. I think they will be hard to beat next year because they probably started earlier than everyone else developing next year’s car as well. But yeah, really happy for him.
QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR
Q: (Tom Cary – Daily Telegraph) Lewis after what happened in Brazil and the disappointment there and you spoke earlier this week about how you know how difficult that was and how you just wanted to get away from it all, how important was it to have a weekend like this where the car was really firing and you produced a drive the way you did? I know you disappointed not to have taken part, obviously yesterday, but a good performance today.
LH: Yeah, great, great performance. It’s not that I didn’t think I could do it. So, yeah, I’ve had many races like this, but I’m generally happy to have had the recovery. You know, it’s a new day and I just tried to approach it with a positive mindset. and you know to be able to have a car underneath me today, and be able to push and overtake people was such a great feeling. That was honestly one of the most enjoyable races. Yeah, if I’d started pole and just led the way, wouldn’t have felt as much fun, for sure. Of course, winning a Grand Prix is always a great thing, but when whoever it is faces adversity and has to battle through, it just feels so much better when you do succeed.
Q: (Ben Waterworth – The Roar) Just a question for all three. With such a short turnaround between now and Qatar next week, what can you each do to acclimatise from the quite chilly conditions here in Vegas to obviously the quite extreme heat in Qatar? with such a short turnaround?
GR: I mean, there’s not really anything you can do in these days. Preparation needed to happen beforehand. And it’s going to be a challenge for everyone, but we’re all in the same boat. So no one’s going to be on peak condition personally, but it’s just about limiting the losses.
Q: Depends how big the party is tonight. Lewis, please?
LH: Not really much more to add to that. Not a huge amount… Just get there as soon as you can.
Q: (Ben Hunt – Autosport) Two questions. First one: George, can you just confirm if you jumped in the fountain or not? I see you’ve got wet clothes.
GR: No, I really wanted to do it, but I was so cold after the race, I thought, like, I’m going to get super ill and this time last year I actually caught pneumonia and I was ill all the way into mid-February after Vegas and Abu Dhabi. So I was like, you know, in the moment I really wanted to do it, but then I was thinking back to the struggles I had this time 12 months ago because it’s such a toll on the body. It’s from all the champagne, to be honest, why I was soaking wet.
Q: (Ben Hunt – Autosport) To follow that up then, can I just get your three thoughts on the Las Vegas Grand Prix? Timing’s obviously very hard. George, you mentioned having a snooze before qualifying. But could you sum it up for us, what you think, what you’d like to change, or whether it needs changing? Obviously, coming at such a crucial point in the year, you mentioned fatigue. That’s a big part of it.
GR: I mean, obviously, it’s not great timing at all for the people who are here in the moment. But we’re 20 drivers, let’s say 4,000 people who do all the F1 races collectively. And there’s tens of millions of people who watch at home. So I’d probably say having it back-to-back with Qatar is the biggest challenge. If we have a week off afterwards, I’d say that’s probably the only thing realistically that would help.
LH: I think it’s great. I mean the race is amazing, so really happy to… Yeah for sure the back-to-back is not the easiest. It’s massively challenging for everyone here, and particularly for the people that work in the garages that are on their feet taking the car to pieces now, packing it up and shipping it over, and they won’t get a lot of rest. So for them, it’s definitely the hardest, but they love it, and I don’t even think if you were to ask them to change it, they would do this 10 times over. But the actual race is absolutely fantastic. It’s such a great event. They’ve really, really done a mega job this year. So I can’t wait to come back next year.
Q: (Sahil Kapur – NBC) Question for all three. There are a number of young new drivers coming into F1 next year. Of course, George will be teaming up with one of them. What’s your advice for them? Things to do, not to do in the early days?
GR: Enjoy it, to be honest. It’s such a special moment. Get into Formula 1, it’s… For all of us it’s like every step of your journey, you’re climbing a ladder. And when you reach F1, that’s a huge step and huge pride. And sort of cherish those moments. The driving, to be honest, is probably the easiest part of the job. It’s everything else that comes with Formula 1. There’s a lot more attention versus F2. It’s a big leap in that regard. But just enjoy it.
LH: I don’t know. Don’t do absolutely everything everyone tells you to do. Ask lots of questions. Take your time. Don’t let the negativity get to you because, you know, people are so negative nowadays judging you non-stop. So stay off social media and keep your family and your closest friends close to you because they are the only ones that are your true friends and they’re going to be there for you when they go and get stuff.
Q: (Sam Johnston – Sky Sports) Lando in recent weeks has kind of admitted some feelings of inferiority towards going up against Max. I was wondering if you guys were in similar machinery, let’s say, next year in the kind of way Lando and Max have been for most of this season. Do you feel Max is operating at a level above or you’re all confident you could take him on and duel him in a fight for the title next year?
GR: Yeah, definitely. Nobody’s unbeatable. And you go through these phases where teams and drivers together are dominating and people think if I went up alongside them, I wouldn’t be able to compete with them. And you’ve got to have belief in yourself. I think, you know, the three of us here all believe in ourself. And for me personally, you know, when I teamed up with Lewis, Lewis is the greatest of all time. And, you know, Max is right up there with Lewis. So, Yeah, I absolutely believe in myself that we could fight him in equal machinery.
Q: Do you feel Max is unbeatable, Lewis, going into next season?
LH: It really depends whether they have a second-and-a-half advantage at the first race again like they did this year.
Q: (Ian Parkes – New York Times) Lewis, one of the bits of advice you just gave there to the young drivers was to not be weighed down by adverse criticism. I’m just wondering why you said that. I’m just wondering whether you perhaps feel that you might have been adversely criticised this season, given the struggles.
LH: It’s not about this year. We’re talking about youngsters. We’re talking about 18-year-olds. And I remember when I was 22 and you’re thrown in a deep end. You’ve been given training as a young driver through the younger series, but you’re not most of them. Probably don’t have a PR person. The team will have a PR person, but they’re not looking out for you. They’re looking out for the team. And so you’re thrown in the deep end and you’re trying to be nice and people take advantage of you. And so my guidance, like if I had a young driver and I was looking after him, I would put a lot of support around him so that people can get to him. And the socials and media and stuff would not be able to affect that young individual’s mindset. And I think that protecting that is really important. because then I think it’s really about giving people, firstly, them getting the opportunity and not knocking them down when they make mistakes. Which one of you or anyone here, 18 years old, 19 years old, has not made mistakes? And it’s just that when you do it in the spotlight, it’s really, really, really tough. And so we should be lifting these people up and giving them not just one chance, two chances, just continue to support them and just not slating them because that’s just not nice.
Source: FIA.com
