Lewis Hamilton felt like he was ‘in the headmaster’s office’ after hitting the wall during practice at the Canadian GP.
In a rare error for the world champion, he lost the rear on the sausage kerb in Turn 9 and slid into the barrier causing session-ending damage in the afternoon.
Both Ferrari and teammate Valtteri Bottas could capitalise as Hamilton missed both a soft tyre run and a race simulation, but the six-time winner in Montreal wasn’t too disheartened.
“I made a mistake in FP2 and damaged the car. The boys tried really hard to fix it, but there wasn’t enough time,” Hamilton was quoted by Crash.net.
“It was an innocent mistake, I was doing multiple laps on the medium tyre and was really trying to find the limit. Obviously I went slightly over, I had a big snap out of Turn 9 and was drifting for a long time, hoping I wouldn’t hit the wall.
“The boys will do a great job fixing the car tonight and we’ll come back ready for a better day tomorrow.”
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Hamilton’s crash was part of a big momentum shift in the second session, as Ferrari finished 1-2 having been a second down on Mercedes in the morning.
And Bottas did concede extracting the performance from the car was proving tricky.
“The car feels strong, but we have some work to do on the balance,” the Finn stated.
“The car became more difficult to drive with the changes we made for FP2, but it also felt a little quicker so we need to review if there’s anything we could have done better for FP2 and what we’re going to do for tomorrow.”
“It’s nice to have a new engine with a bit more power; it’s not a huge difference, but you can feel it, and it’s a really good feeling,” Bottas said.
“The car seemed strong on both long and short runs, but Ferrari was very quick on the straights, so I expect it to be a very close fight tomorrow.
“But I like this track and I’m confident, so I’m looking forward to qualifying.”
