Lewis Hamilton: “2015 will be a tougher season than 2014”
The reigning world champion discusses the upcoming 2015 season in the British press. For him, the competition will tighten, and Mercedes will engage in an intense battle with its pursuers.
2015 will be a much more complicated year for Lewis Hamilton, having won the world championship title in 2014. The British driver will be defending his title this season. However, Nico Rosberg’s teammate, in an interview with Sky Sports F1, is concerned about the tightening competition: « A large part of their gap has been closed compared to us. »
F1 has concluded the second preseason testing session in Barcelona and the gap appears to be narrowing between Mercedes and the other teams. The 2015 F1 season kickoff is approaching, and the 2014 world champion anticipates a tough battle between Mercedes and their challengers.
Lewis Hamilton believes that the Ferrari SF15-T has shown itself to be particularly comfortable and has surprised Mercedes. Next week’s testing session in Barcelona will be the last pre-season test before Melbourne and will be crucial to understand where Mercedes stands: « I think we’ll know more next week during the final test in Barcelona. Everyone usually brings updates for the first race. Then, when you arrive at the first race of the season, everything is different because the tires start working better, the track isn’t so good at first, but it gets better. It’s like driving blindly, but that’s what I love about this sport. I really don’t know what’s going to happen. »
The 2015 season will be a difficult season for the double world F1 champion: « It seems that Ferrari has improved its pace. Red Bull is just as fast, but they may need to improve their engine and the Williams will be there ».
Present on the first day of testing in Barcelona, Lewis Hamilton had to withdraw due to flu after 11 laps: « When I get into the car, everything is different. Even though it’s an evolution of last year’s car, so much has changed, and you have to relearn the automatisms. I have a new engineer, and he does things differently, but significantly better in many ways. So, I need to learn to work with him ».
There is an area where Lewis Hamilton is satisfied: the car’s reliability. The F1 W06 Hybrid is one of the cars that has accumulated a huge number of kilometers during its first two tests: « It is too early to say, but we have covered such a great distance, we have tried to improve reliability and I think we have succeeded. »
