Hamilton expects “tough” start from pole position

2014 Russian Grand Prix

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Lewis Hamilton believes the long run to the first braking point at the Sochi Autodrom will allow his rivals to give him a tough time at the start of tomorrow’s race.

“I’m really grateful that I got the pole here, for the first time,” he said after qualifying. “It’s going to be tough tomorrow, it’s a long lead down to turn one, so we’ll find out how that works out.”

Having been the fastest driver at the end of practice Hamilton said the conditions in qualifying were surprisingly tricky.

“It wasn’t the easiest of sessions,” he said. “Obviously these guys were looking quite strong and just hooking up a good lap, for some reason, wasn’t the same as practice.”

Hamilton made a mistake during practice, spinning at turn 17. However he said it wasn’t the case that Sochi’s off-camber corners were catching drivers out.

“I don’t necessarily think they invite errors,” he said. “At the end of the day we’re pushing all the time so you’re going to see those mistakes, or hiccups, occur all the time. But they’re generally easy to recover from.”

“I really think that tomorrow’s going to be a good race for people to watch,” he added.

“You’ve got the long straights which you can follow with the DRS and it’s nice and wide so therefore you should be able to follow quite nicely. It could be one of the better races that we’ve had for a long time.”

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    Keith Collantine
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    11 comments on “Hamilton expects “tough” start from pole position”

    1. Please, guys, please put some orange sleeping policeman down on the outside of T2 by the time the F1 field starts in Sochi tomorrow afternoon.

      1. I imagine the car’s transponder is sensitive enough that a wire along the edge of the circuit could maintain a tally of ‘exceeding track limit’ offences. And you get a second added to your next pit stop for each ‘off’…or something.

        1. @motor I said so not because of regular track limit offenses, but rather first lap excursions.

          1. @Atticus Didn’t mean to go off topic. I was concerned about turn two antics resulting in damaged suspension from the bumps they put in. It is a huge penalty to suffer when we are so likely to see people squeezed thru there.

        2. The speed bumps laid down last night should be perfectly able to discourage track limit violations. What I’m concerned about is an awful lot of drivers running wide at the start á lá GP2 and GP3 races and then coming back onto the track with a lot of confusion about how many places they should give back.

          And this is not even the worst case scenario – that would be coming back onto the track at unabated speeds and cause collisions like Canamasas did in Monza in GP2, or two other drivers at Paul Ricard in Formula Renault.

          1. *causing

          2. Or Kimi at Silverstone !

        3. GP2 race gave race control a good idea of what can happen… But they have to learn quickly for once and give clear instructions about offenses in driver meeting and firm penalties or yes we certainly could see chaos. And not just turn 2 but alsoturn 4! Anyone who lost out at turn 2 will have a chance to come back here first lap. This is brand new track and no one has experience on how early they’ll have to brake into both turn 2 and 4, we may well see plenty of contact on the first lap. I was very impressed how clean first lap was for GP2, everyone very heads up.

    2. Yay , DRS super easy overtakes :(

      if they want to make overtakes more exciting how about putting DRS on the front flap? :)

      1. @greg-c Yeah they should throw off Monza too. Only DRS overtakes. Or Monaco, only processional races over there. (Two reasons why Russia would be bad, just saying)

        1. @xtwl
          mate, be happy to see monaco gone, might be an awesome challenge for the drivers to stay outa the walls but not really an exciting race to watch, ,
          monza, hmmmm, not so sure , i kinda like the speed, this last monza wasn’t too bad. DanRic made some nice passes, maybe the track of the 80’s gave better races? i forget,
          DRS just seems to me like giving one bloke a sword , and one bloke a pencil , kinda not fair,
          but i would probably just moan without it, :)

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