F1: Mercedes has learned from Montreal problems, says Hamilton

F1: Mercedes has learned from Montreal problems, says Hamilton

Published Jun. 19, 2014 1:10 p.m. ET
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Lewis Hamilton insists that he sees the positives after both Mercedes W05s hit trouble in Montreal.

Hamilton says that the team has learned from the problems it faced, but has not had to compromise the car's pace.

“We definitely haven't lost any performance,” he said. “We would only have gained from that experience, as you do generally from all experiences like that. Regardless of whether you lose points, you step back from it, a lot of work goes into understanding the situation and rectifying it. If faced with a situation like that, first of all we'll be able to handle it a lot better, and secondly the car has been fixed so that it won't happen again.”

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In Montreal, Toto Wolff suggested that Hamilton's car had retired and Nico Rosberg's didn't because it got so hot in its pitstop, but Lewis says it was more a case of the fact Rosberg had a clear track ahead.

“It was not necessarily the pit stop,” he said. “I think it was more to do with the fact that Nico was in clear air in front of me, and so he's constantly got cool, free, clean air coming in, and I was very closely behind all the time, so I was having dirty warm air. You can see a slight difference in the temperatures. They were both on the limit, and mine went over.”

Despite losing two races to mechanical failures, Hamilton says he's not frustrated.

“At the moment, knowing that we've got a lot of races ahead of us, it's not concerning me too much. Of course if it was later on in the season and we were where we were, it would be a little bit different. In one sense it's comforting to know that I feel like I've done my optimum, up until now, but there's still room for improvement. Plus as a team it is in some ways positive for us to know that we can still improve. If we were perfect then it wouldn't be fun for the rest of the year.”

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