Watch: Lewis Hamilton's terse reply when questioned if he was going to outqualify George Russell in Canada

Lewis Hamilton gave a terse reply when asked if he could challenge or outqualify his Mercedes teammate George Russell in the 2024 Canadian GP this weekend. The seven-time world champion has been trailing 7-1 in the qualifying to his young compatriot and has looked slightly weaker over one lap this year.

Hamilton recently pointed out that after the Monaco GP qualifying session, he did not envision himself beating George Russell over a single lap due to his struggles to extract the maximum from the W15.

However, when the Brit was asked the same question in the pre-race press conference in Canada, he gave a more positive but concise answer, saying:

“I’ll try.”

Lewis Hamilton was more confident and optimistic about their chances this weekend given the progress made by Mercedes over the last couple of races, adding:

"Yes, the car's continuing to improve. I think everyone's obviously taken a step hopefully closer to the Red Bulls, and I think that's been really positive. But incredibly proud of everyone back at the factory, just how hard everyone's working and how resilient everyone is."

"Everyone's just staying very focused, head down. The morale's really great in the team, so I'm hoping that we can get closer to these guys and start actually competing at the front with them," he continued.

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Lewis Hamilton gives his take on the W15 improvements in 2024

Lewis Hamilton stated that the W15 was a more stable car in the corner entry and had a better ride quality than the previous two iterations in the past two years.

He told the media:

"The biggest improvement I think coming into this year has been ride quality and being able to get the car lower, which is what others have been able to do. And then stability on entry of corners."

"The car is far more predictable than it ever was, particularly the last couple of years. And particularly this year, it's a lot more stable, so we can be more committed into the corners," he added.

However, Hamilton was critical of the corner balance of the car and claimed that the team was working on it. He was upbeat about his expectations from the weekend and claimed that the podium wasn't that far away.

The Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is one of the favorite hunting grounds of the British driver, as he has won seven races at the track with an additional three podiums in his 14 appearances. He has only achieved more success in his home race in Silverstone and Hungary, where he has won a record eight times.

The soon-to-be Ferrari driver would look to close his qualifying deficit to George Russell and the points difference in the Drivers' Standings as he trails the latter by 12 points.