F1: Hamilton Not Disappointed To Finish Third

Formula 1

F1: Hamilton Not Disappointed To Finish Third

McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton will focus on race pace in Chinese Grand Prix...

Adam Cooper | http://www.speedtv.com | Posted March 25, 2012 Sepang (MAS)

Lewis Hamilton insisted that he was satisfied to take home a third place in Malaysia given the lottery conditions, despite the fact that he’d slipped back from pole for the second race in a row.

Hamilton was handicapped by some pit delays and calls that could have been made earlier, but in the end he simply didn’t have better pace than the two cars ahead.

“It was a pretty straightforward day,” said Hamilton. “Fernando and Sergio did a fantastic job, so congratulations to them. We just weren’t very quick today. We were a little bit unfortunate with the calls. I think we didn’t make the right calls at the right time and lost a bit of ground there. We lost quite a lot of time through a couple of the pit stops. I don’t know what problems we had, but I seemed to be sitting there for quite some time. Otherwise I was just trying to hunt them down, but they were both massively quick.

“In one of the pit stops I lost a good four or five seconds, just sitting there with some problem with the front right. After that I was trying to catch them, but we had 15 laps or something like that so I had to alter the car for the tires as best as I could. I was being chased by the guys behind, so a little bit of lack of pace today from me, but I’m still fortunate to be here.”

Asked why he seemed to be less disappointed than he had been with a similar result in Australia, Hamilton said: “I wouldn’t say I was happy with third – I can never be happy with going backwards, but it’s really just due to the conditions.

“Those two guys in front did a better job, and today was just really trying to keep the car on the track and bring home some points, and I did. The goal is always to try and be on the podium and stay consistent and so far I’m doing that, but of course I would like to be a little bit higher up so I’m going to try and focus on my race pace for the next race and see if I can convert a good position to a better result.”

Adam Cooper notched up his 27th season as a racing journalist in 2011. He has written about F1 for SPEED.com since 2005. Follow him on Twitter.