Mercedes AMG Motorsport‘s Lewis Hamilton has described his win at the Russian Grand Prix at the Sochi Autodrom on Sunday as a “long time coming”.
The British driver started on pole, with his team-mate, the Finn Valtteri Bottas, starting in fourth, finishing with a 1-2.
Hamilton said he recognised it to be an achievement that they had managed to win the fight against their closest rivals, the Scuderia Ferrari team.
“This win feels like it has been a long time coming and it was just an incredible job from the whole team: never giving up, pushing forward, always trying to be innovative. It’s incredibly inspiring to be part of that and amazing to have this result today considering how quick the Ferraris were in that opening stint,” said Hamilton.
He added that he struggled to keep pace with the Ferraris, especially because he was running the harder, medium compound tyre, slower compared with the soft.
“It was a really hard task to keep up with them, especially on the offset tyre, but we kept pushing and the car felt really good today.
“We thought that their soft tyres would drop off during that opening stint, but they had such good pace that I was struggling to keep up with them – and that’s probably a little warning for us, because it looked like they got their calculations right in that regard,” he commented.
Despite the 2019 Formula 1 season beginning to come to a close, Hamilton is determined not to look too far ahead and take one race at a time.
“Looking ahead, of course the races are counting down but we are just trying to take things one race at a time, put one foot in front of the other and not stumble. When you have a battle like this, you’re working flat out, turning over every stone and questioning every little thing you can do better. We love that challenge and I’m really excited for the next races,” he concluded.
