LH44 on the #BelgianGP: The battle continues!

After the race Lewis said: “It is definitely going to be very tough going into the next race. Ultimately Ferrari did a better job all weekend, or they were just faster all weekend. If you look at last year, they were faster here also and we just managed to hold them behind, whereas today their power is obviously a lot better than it was last year and they sailed past us at the start. Their overall pace was stronger. I couldn’t match it. So naturally that’s not great for us but I’m hoping when we go to the next race maybe the deficit isn’t as big as it was here. I’m hoping our package suits that track [Monza] a bit better than it did here in Belgium.

“Ferrari have had the upper hand on us for some time it’s just that the pendulum has swung a little bit. I would say those last two races in particular, with the cards that we were dealt; we did a better job with them even though they had better cards. But there is only a certain amount of times you can do that. If you are playing with a deck of cards and you are bluffing there is only a certain amount of times that you can do that before your opponent realises. So moving forward we have some performance coming, but I’m sure they have some performance coming too, so I really can’t predict what is going to happen. But the battle continues and for the sport this is really exciting. We will keep pushing.”

While Lewis was disappointed not to be on the top step of the podium, his Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport teammate, Valtteri Bottas had an eventful race going from 17th on the grid to fourth.

Valtteri, who also picked up a five-second-time penalty for a first corner incident with Williams’ Sergey Sirotkin, added: “Our goal for today was damage limitation and we've had a good recovery drive. I was hoping to maybe get the chance to be on podium, but I had a collision going into Turn one which damaged my front wing. After that P4 was the maximum we could get and it's not a bad result given the fact that we started from P17.

“I actually quite enjoyed the drive today, as I got to overtake a lot of cars. My favorite moment was probably the pass in Eau Rouge - that was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, we couldn't win the race today, but we scored more points than Ferrari, so that's one positive. They looked really strong this weekend, both in qualifying and in the race. We made a step forward with our engine for this weekend, but the Ferraris are still quicker so we need to keep pushing.”