Hamilton relishes silencing critics with Sprint win

Lewis Hamilton says a number of his critics have been “yapping along the way” and not understanding the size of the task he faces as he called for calm following his victory in the Sprint at the Chinese Grand Prix.

The seven-time world champion’s move to Ferrari has drawn huge attention as Hamilton left Mercedes after 12 seasons. Trying to adapt to a new team, Hamilton believes there was an overreaction to the first race struggles in Melbourne, and that he instantly felt in a better position with his new car prior to taking Sprint pole and a comfortable victory.

“I woke up feeling great today, the weather’s beautiful here in Shanghai, knowing we have this amazing crowd, but the first race was difficult,” Hamilton said. “And I really do feel a lot of people underestimated the steep climb it is to get into a new team, to become acclimatized within the team, understanding, communication, all sorts of things.

“The amount of critics and people I’ve heard yapping along the way, clearly not understanding, maybe because they’ve not had the experience or are just unaware… So it felt great to come here and feel more comfortable in the car, because in Melbourne I really didn’t feel comfortable in the car.

“From lap one here this weekend, I’ve really been feeling on it. The engineers have done a great job, the mechanics have done a great job, to really fine-tune the car, and it felt great today. I got a good start, and then there’s so much grip on this new tarmac it’s really hard to look after these tires, but I think everyone was struggling the same.”

Hamilton held off Max Verstappen in the first half of the race before pulling clear to win by nearly seven seconds from Oscar Piastri, but he says the same mantra rings true that Ferrari should not get carried away with the result.

“I don’t feel the pressure. I know the Tifosi, I know the fans, I know the team wants to win, and I know it means everything to them. But Rome wasn’t built in one day, one step at a time, we’re not going to get ahead of ourselves. We cannot.

“We’ve got to continue to push, we’ve got to be diligent and just remain focused, stay calm. Most importantly stay calm because these moments get us all excited. We’ll be back at our desks after this and focused on qualifying this afternoon. It’s a long, long way. It’s a marathon not a Sprint, so we’ve just got to take our time.”

While Hamilton appeared to have the measure of the Red Bull during the Sprint, the threat of McLaren is expected to be greater if Piastri and teammate Lando Norris can improve on their Sprint qualifying positions.

“I think it was a really productive Sprint,” Piastri said. “Obviously finishing second is always a great result and I think I really learned a lot in that one. As much as the result is nice, I think the way I got the result is an encouraging thing.

“We didn’t quite have enough pace for Lewis at the front but I think we’ve got some good ideas for this afternoon and tomorrow and we’ll see if we can go one spot better.

“Yes [I’m confident for Sunday’s race], hopefully we don’t have as much traffic though, that’s the plan. We’ll see what we can do this afternoon to start a bit higher and then go from there. But I think we’ve got good pace in the car, we’ve clearly got a lot of competition this weekend - the Ferrari look pretty rapid – so we’ve got to be on our best form.”