Lewis Hamilton says his lack of running was “not the end of the world” during Friday practice at the Dutch Grand Prix.
After losing almost 40 minutes to the red flag caused by Sebastian Vettel’s MGU-K problem in FP1, the Mercedes driver pulled off early on in FP2 with his own engine-related issue.
The good news for Hamilton is the power unit was the one that he used to start the season in Bahrain, and though he managed just 20 laps across the day, the Briton wasn’t too disheartened about the predicament.
“I just lost power, they told me to stop. It’s not the end of the world,” he told the media.
“This morning I only got 20 minutes of running with the red flag, so naturally it puts on the back foot.”
“Stop, stop, stop.” ❌ Drama in FP2 for LH.
We’re working hard to get to the bottom of this tonight. ? pic.twitter.com/GpITpncWVo
— Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team (@MercedesAMGF1) September 3, 2021
The reason why Hamilton was still upbeat was teammate Valtteri Bottas completing a full program of 32 laps in the afternoon at Zandvoort, tied with Max Verstappen for the most of anyone.
“Valtteri looks like he had a good session, so hopefully tomorrow we can try and make up for some of the time we lost,” Lewis continued.
“I made some changes into the [second] session but I only got one lap with it so it’s very hard to pick the good or bad points from that change.
“But as I’ve said we’ve Valtteri who did a lot of running, lots of data analysis from the long runs, most other people got their long runs, so we’ll see how it goes.”
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While Hamilton is arguably the least popular driver at Zandvoort this weekend, he admits to instantly falling back in love with the circuit.
“The track is epic,” he stated. “It’s really fantastic. It brought back so many memories of when I first drove it.
“I knew it was great when I was in Formula 3 but it’s crazy in a Formula 1 car. The speed we’re going through turn seven, it’s a real racing circuit.
“It will be interesting but I don’t think you will be overtaking because it is high, high downforce with super-fast corners so you probably won’t be able to follow through.
“But let’s hope there’s a good strategy for Sunday.”
