Lewis Hamilton sees Max Verstappen still a long way off

Lewis Hamilton’s words

Lewis Hamilton is under no illusions after coming close to victory in Austin: “Honestly it’s hard to say if we’ve taken a step forward, the team will know. But it’s often about different races, and to have an exact perception of what might have happened from the last race to this one is difficult.”

In particular, there is one detail that fuels the Englishman’s pessimism: “Red Bull was very fast on the straight, I think with the DRS open they are faster than us by something like 35 km/h. Whereas if it’s us chasing them with the DRS, we only have 22 km/h advantage. So he was able to sink the overtake even if he was far behind. But even without DRS, I think they have about 8 km/h advantage over us.”

It was Sebastian Vettel who was the first driver to win a world championship with Red Bull. The German put everyone in line for four years in a row, from 2010 to 2013. The Austrian stable returned to success in 2021 thanks to Dutchman Max Verstappen, with the son of art repeating the following year. If there was a battle to the last in 2021, that was not the case in 2022.