Lewis Hamilton is hopeful his Ferrari will suit the Baku City Circuit better than Mercedes’ cars did because its ride is softer.
“It’s a much different car than I’ve ever driven here before, so I’m excited to see how that feels and what I can get from it,” Hamilton told the official Formula 1 channel.
“It’s got more mechanical grip,” Hamilton explained. “It’s a lot softer than the cars I’ve driven in the past.”
Hamilton competed in all eight prior races at Baku when he was at Mercedes. He won the 2018 race and was leading the year before when he was delayed by a pit stop to fix a loose headrest.
However he doesn’t expect to challenge for victory again this weekend. “A win is a bit far-fetched considering I’ve been sixth, seventh and eighth for most of the season,” he said.
“I would love to get a podium for the team at some stage. Charles [Leclerc] has had four or five of them.
“I feel optimistic coming into the weekend. I feel like I’ve found a couple things and now I need to work on extracting them. So I really hope that this weekend can be the start of that.”
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Leclerc took pole position for each of the last four races in Baku. However neither he nor Ferrari have ever won a race at the circuit.
He finished second to Oscar Piastri last year and expects tough competition from McLaren and Red Bull this weekend.
“McLaren will be the team to beat,” Leclerc predicted. “Red Bull in Monza have been very impressive with Max [Verstappen]. They’ve probably found something and brought new things to the car that made them do a big step forward. So I think that they will also be up there with McLaren.
“I think we’ll be behind them. But it’s a track I particularly like and at which I’ve been performing particularly well in qualifying on one lap.
“Then in the race it’s a bit more difficult to hide the true performance of the car, but we’ll do our best and see what’s possible.”
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