“It gave me a lot more confidence last week”: Lewis Hamilton names one ‘real positive’ from the latest Mercedes upgrades

Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton mentioned that running the upgrades already for a week has given him confidence heading into the Spanish GP.

The German team introduced their first major upgrades, which included Red Bull-inspired sidepods in Monaco, to get closer to the reigning world champions. Although they were not able to get all the data that they needed in Monaco, drivers Lewis Hamilton and George Russell did not report any negative feedback.

The seven-time world champion said, as per Race Fans:

“The new suspension was a real positive for me, it gave me a lot more confidence last week and so I’m hoping that translates here. There’s been around a second delta in race trim, for example, we haven’t covered that with this step but it is a step in the right direction. What I felt last weekend was I felt a little bit more confident in the car, and more able to commit to the corner.

He added:

"So I’m hoping that at this track that’s the same, but hopefully, better because there are a lot of medium and high-speed corners. I’m hoping the flow of the car is better and maybe in the following we can follow closer."

"A huge amount of work has gone into this and we’re hoping that it puts us on the right track. Changing train tracks, putting us on the track that can lead to that second.”

“I know those two have upgrades here this weekend” - Lewis Hamilton

The Briton revealed that he was aware that Ferrari and Aston Martin had also brought upgrades to the Spanish GP. Lewis Hamilton said:

“I know those two have upgrades here this weekend. Someone said they had upgrades this weekend so we’ll find out tomorrow how good those upgrades are. Just from looking at the numbers of what this upgrade is, before they had their upgrade, maybe it would put us right close to them."

"But we’ll see whether they take a big step or a small step forwards this weekend. I’m still hopeful that we can compete with them this weekend. But it’s a big hope.”

Lewis Hamilton stated that he did not necessarily agree with Mercedes' direction with the upgrades and added:

“We now have the wider sidepods that are more in the direction of where the Red Bull is. It’s not been my decision to go that way. It’s been clear that when we dropped the car back on the ground in the first test, it’s basically the identical twin, really, to last year’s car except for the bouncing,”

It will be interesting to see how competitive Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes are in Barcelona this weekend.