Lewis Hamilton, basking in the moment of claiming his third world championship took a friendly jab at Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel today in the post race press conference.
Hamilton talked about all the times he sat there when it was Vettel’s day and now that it was his, he was going to talk for longer than Vettel did when the German won his four world titles.
It garnered laughter from the room and from Vettel, but Sebastian’s range of emotions during the Q&A showed a man quietly analyzing his season, his race, and his approach for next season. Realizing that despite a phenomenal first year effort with Ferrari, the championship had been lost.
Both drivers have publicly stated they want to fight on track more in 2016, so I pressed the four time champ for his feelings, and asked him how badly he wanted to take on Lewis and get “his day back” next year.
“Well, on days like this, very badly. It’s a long way, for sure today it doesn’t feel as good as probably it should after a great race to be honest. When you start 14th and you finish on the podium that’s pretty good. Equally, let’s not forget the targets that we set out in the beginning… it’s a new start for the entire team, with a lot of things changing.
“I think we’ve exceeded expectations this year by quite a lot so yeah, the target is to do better next year and to keep fighting until the end and be in a better position. Equally we have to be patient because it’s a big project, there’s a lot of effort that’s going in in Maranello and the people are really hungry and I think that probably the whole factory, the whole team here feels similar to me today whereas it’s great to know that we had a fantastic recovery and another strong race but equally it’s not so nice if you lose out on the championship, so the target is definitely to come back stronger next year and just to keep making progress.
“I think that’s the best medicine that we need to prescribe to us.”
Image: Ferrari via Ercole Colombo
