Lewis Hamilton is hopeful an upgraded floor can enable Ferrari to “take a step” forward at the Bahrain Grand Prix this weekend.
The seven-time world champion has endured a frustrating start to his first campaign with the Italian team, who have fallen well short of their pre-season billing as title contenders.
While Hamilton won the Chinese Grand Prix Sprint, his results over full race distance across the first three rounds have been hugely underwhelming, with seventh place last weekend in Japan his best result so far, following a disqualification in China and 10th in Australia.
Hamilton told Sky Sports F1: “We’ve got an upgrade this weekend so I’m excited that hopefully we should have a bit more downforce.
“I’m not really feeling a huge amount of issues, just a lack of overall performance pace-wise, which we can hopefully take a step [forward] this weekend.”
This weekend sees Formula 1 return to the scene of pre-season testing at the Bahrain International Circuit, which is another element that Hamilton hopes can lead to an upturn in Ferrari’s performance.
He added: “I’ve done quite a bit of driving since the test that we had here, so I should be a lot more comfortable in the car than I was through testing here.
“We’ve got an upgrade, we’ve got a better understanding of the set-up, so hopefully it should bode well for a better weekend.”
Despite being hopeful of improvement, Hamilton is not expecting the new parts to put Ferrari on equal terms with early front-runners McLaren.
Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri shared a win each over the first two races, before they were upset by Red Bull’s Max Verstappen in Japan as the reigning world champion defied an apparent car performance deficit to beat the McLarens.
