Hamilton: a tough weekend for tyres

After admitting in Canada he could not have done a one-stop race, McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton predicts much of the same in Valencia.

Lewis Hamilton’s victory in Canada came as his well-judged two-stop strategy proved superior to the one-stop race ran by many of the other heavy points scorers – but Hamilton revealed after the race that the point was moot as he didn’t think his car was capable of a one-stopper in Montreal. Speaking in the FIA Thursday press conference in Valencia, he predicted much the same would be true for this weekend’s European Grand Prix.

“On the tyre side of things, I anticipate it could be another very, very tough weekend, trying to look after them,” he said. “I think it will be very interesting to see how the teams vary [their strategies] as they did in the last race. You have to expect teams like Lotus and Sauber doing very, very well on their long runs and Ferrari are also very, very good on their long runs. I definitely don’t anticipate doing a one stop strategy this weekend – but I will obviously try to look after the tyres as best we can.”

As has been the case at earlier races, McLaren were criticised again in Canada for slow pitstops, though Hamilton argued the perception isn’t entirely valid and predicted an error free weekend ahead. “In terms of our pit stops, we are constantly altering and improving race by race, and the guys go back to the factory after every race with footage of the pit stop to understand and analyse exactly what went wrong, so that next time we go out we don’t have those problems.

“I think this weekend we will have an even better set of pit stops again. I think at the last race the first pit stop – if we didn’t have the problem with the pull away –would have maybe been the fastest of the whole season so far. The stationary time was 2.9s, so quite quick – but I lost a second as I pulled away. We are just going to keep working on it.”