Hamilton hopes rain levels playing field, but warns wet tires 'don't work'

Lewis Hamilton says he is hoping for wet weather at the Canadian Grand Prix to give Ferrari a chance of victory, despite feeling the Pirelli wet weather tires don’t work in low temperatures.

Along with Red Bull, Ferrari is one of two teams that ran in the wet during the pre-season shakedown in Barcelona, while Hamilton also carried out wet tire testing duties for Pirelli in Italy last month. The seven-time world champion wants the forecast rain to deliver the first wet race of the year in Montreal, but he says it will be a significant challenge to extract grip from the tires.

“I'm hoping it is [raining], and I hope that levels us out to the guys ahead, and maybe gives us a bit of a chance to fight with the Mercedes,” Hamilton said.

“Ultimately, the wet tires aren’t spectacular in terms of the way that they've moved from having no blankets to having low blanket temperatures, and then ultimately they've had to build a tire that works with those low blankets, and the tires don't work. So, we're constantly battling the tires that don't work.

“From my test, I've pushed them to raise the blankets - they were advised to raise the blankets. They did it. And from the test, I pushed them to add the blankets onto the extreme tires, which they have, but that's still not enough. There’s still a lot of work to do.”

Although he's hoping for rain to impact Sunday’s race, Hamilton was also encouraged by the progress he has made with his Ferrari so far this weekend after qualifying fifth and within 0.3s of pole position.

“It felt great. We made some good changes in qualifying. I was hopeful for a better result, but I didn't get my last lap. The car was feeling like we were improving. I think, honestly, if I got that last lap, I probably could have been third … It was definitely challenging to get the tires to stay in the window with the ambient temp.

“[The better feeling comes from] brakes, corner entry stability, and just with the set-up that I've migrated to. I'm much, much happier with being able to attack the corners.”