Hamilton encouraged by Spa fightback

Lewis Hamilton says he is confident he can have better results moving forward and chase his first Ferrari podium in Hungary after his comeback drive in the Belgian Grand Prix.

Ferrari brought a new rear suspension to Spa-Francorchamps but Hamilton had two early exits across both Sprint and normal qualifying, starting from the pit lane on Sunday. In an impressive first stint, Hamilton pulled off a number of overtakes in the wet and then timed his pit stop perfectly to rise to seventh place, and he says he unlocked a way of getting better performance from the upgraded car by the end of the weekend.

“Everyone in the team worked so hard,” Hamilton said. “We obviously had these upgrades, everyone back in the factory worked so hard, and then when you come and put a performance like I had in these past two days, it's tough because that's not what the team deserves.

“It wasn't a case of necessarily coming in and not being in the right mind through the weekend. There were a few factors that did affect, particularly on the Friday - Saturday it was just me - but I recovered.

“So I got some points. We outscored Mercedes on points, which is great. Charles [Leclerc] did a great job. Clearly the car is improving because Charles was able to hold on to another podium. So I'm still going to work hard next week to try and get my first one.

“I think this [race] is definitely one to kind of put behind me. I definitely feel confident going forwards from here. Having learned more about the car today, fine-tuned it, I'll set that up, go to it for next week, be at the factory on Wednesday. So, I don't see why we wouldn't have better results going forward.”

A wet weather setup helped Hamilton’s early charge, but he also explains how other components introduced in recent races – including rear brake changes – played a role in his struggles.

“Obviously massively challenge for me starting back there. But I made some changes overnight. So much in the build up to this week – obviously with the upgrade that we have, there's basically two elements to it. One of those elements, we had it to test back in Montreal, but I didn't end up testing it, Charles ended up testing it, but he ended up using part of it for a couple of races. So he did a great job today and is feeling more acclimatized.

“For me, it was the first time using it and that spin that we had caught me out because we didn't have settings.

“Also, a change of engineer. So we were both in a deep end basically. I think we did a really good job overnight to rectify some of those [issues] – tweak it and fine tune it. And the car was so much better to drive. So I had a lot of fun trying to make my way through.”

The change of engineer relates to someone working alongside both Hamilton and his existing race engineer Riccardo Adami, with Adami still audible on the Ferrari driver’s team radio throughout the weekend.

“It's not easy to switch engineers within the middle of a season. But it's someone that I've known for years that was actually on my previous team with me, but not in that position. So we're getting used to each other and having to learn super, super quick. I think the changes that we had really caught both of us out. But I think we did a great job overnight in order to get stronger and stronger.”