F1 | Mercedes, Hamilton: “Ferrari better than last year, but I'm not worried”

Ferrari seemed in very good shape in the Barcelona tests (despite some reliability problems, ed.) so much so that many thought that the SF90 was the car to beat, a belief strengthened after Mercedes showed up in the second week with a version B of the W10. Lewis Hamilton analyzes the work of the Anglo/German team over the winter, not revealing any concerns and inviting everyone to calm down, after all they are just tests.

“Ferrari's form certainly makes our job more difficult – we read in the Spanish version of motorsport. com. I think last year as a team we were further behind on performance, so we had to speed up everything to be able to overtake them. Now, however, we have to do even more to find the performance we need, but we have to do it carefully, because pushing ourselves beyond the limit can lead to making mistakes. We have the best team, there is a lot of experience, we are the world champions not by chance, so we have to be diligent and find balance in our work. As a driver I have to understand how I can do more: clearly during the year there is a huge group of people working to win the world championship, but Ferrari probably started developing this car at least a month before us, while we were pushing to win the 2018 world championship, which we managed to do."

“Broadly speaking, you only have a certain amount of resources you can use, so either you ensure the victory of the current championship or you concentrate on the next one, where maybe you start well, but you are not sure of winning it, also because the rules have changed this year, so it's about finding a balance. Does Ferrari have more members in the team? I wouldn't be surprised, it's difficult to fire people in Italy. It's different to push when you're chasing than when you're defending, but last year they came to the tests with a car that worked well, this year they did even better. We don't care about the challenge, we will fight – concludes Hamilton. We just have to work harder, but I'm proud of what our team has done to date. I am neither worried nor disappointed: we are enthusiastic about our work, we have a hill to climb but we know how to do it."