{"id":95347,"date":"2024-04-06T09:13:37","date_gmt":"2024-04-06T09:13:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alabamadigitalnews.com\/2024\/04\/lewis-hamilton-enjoying-driving-mercedes-at-japanese-gp-and-says-team-have-found-w15-direction-f1-news\/"},"modified":"2024-04-06T09:13:37","modified_gmt":"2024-04-06T09:13:37","slug":"lewis-hamilton-enjoying-driving-mercedes-at-japanese-gp-and-says-team-have-found-w15-direction-f1-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alabamadigitalnews.com\/2024\/04\/lewis-hamilton-enjoying-driving-mercedes-at-japanese-gp-and-says-team-have-found-w15-direction-f1-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Lewis Hamilton enjoying driving Mercedes at Japanese GP and says team have found W15 ‘direction’ | F1 News"},"content":{"rendered":"
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An encouraged Lewis Hamilton is optimistic Mercedes have found an improved direction to move forward with their inconsistent 2024 car after the first two days of the Japanese GP weekend.<\/p>\n
Although Hamilton qualified seventh and George Russell ninth for Sunday’s Suzuka race, the seven-time champion took heart from the improved handling of the W15 and the fact they almost halved their deficit to pole position around the high-speed track compared to F1’s last visit in September when they trailed Red Bull by a full second.<\/p>\n
Hamilton, who outqualified Russell for the first time in four attempts this season, had described Friday’s sole dry practice session as the best of Mercedes’ difficult season so far and, after qualifying, praised Mercedes for the work completed on setting up the inconsistent W15 since the last race in Australia.<\/p>\n
“I was giving it everything,” said Hamilton to Sky Sports F1 <\/em>after lapping 0.569s off Max Verstappen on pole to qualify between McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.<\/p>\n “The team did a really great job this past week making adjustments to our set-up – this is actually the first weekend I’ve not gone crazy with set-up and am not testing a bunch of things, so I’m back to a bit more normal.<\/p>\n “I think we’ve got the car into a much nicer working window and so it’s been really enjoyable driving, it’s just the guys [ahead] are just a little bit faster.<\/p>\n “We were a second or just over a second off last year to the Red Bull and seven [sic, six] tenths is better. Maybe if we had done something a little bit different maybe we could have been another tenth faster, maybe, but other than that that was everything.<\/p>\n