Lewis Hamilton finished fifth in the standings at Monza on Saturday, but will eventually start from 19th after receiving a penalty for changing some parts of his power unit.
The Mercedes driver hopes that due to the characteristics of the Italian track “everyone is going to be on a DRS train ” during the race after having suffered more than expected to closely follow and overtake Valtteri Bottas’ Alfa Romeo in the trainings.
“Yesterday I was behind Valtteri in practice and couldn’t catch up with him or overtake him,” Hamilton said when asked about the effect of DRS at Monza this weekend.
“So I hope I don’t get stuck tomorrow.”
“But I’m imagining that everyone is going to be on a DRS train and I’m going to be sitting there and waiting for strategy, tire degradation and we’ll see how it goes.”
“I was thinking of taking an iPad to the car and when we’re on the DRS train see the new Game of Thrones that’s out now” (referring to House of the Dragon ).
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff shared his driver’s fears but is confident the W13’s cornering speed and “intelligent strategy” can get Hamilton into the points positions tomorrow Sunday.
“Well, he’s going to need the iPad to keep himself entertained and so are we,” Wolff said.
“I really hope it’s not a DRS train. We have a car that is very good in the race, that in the corners is faster than all the others, and we can play a smart strategy and with that put it back in the points zone. no matter what happens in the race.”
“It could even go all the way to the front, but that’s a long shot, obviously.”
Asked by Motorsport.com if there was a lot of room to play with the strategy at Monza, Hamilton said Pirelli ‘s insistence on bringing ever harder compounds will make it an “easy” one-stop race and that he hoped to receive an ” a good opportunity for a safety car” to help him “gain some positions”.
“They should bring the softer tires here so there would be more pit stops and stuff,” he added. “But they keep bringing these very hard tires and we will all do one pitstop.”
“This Sunday it’s easy to make one stop, in general, so the strategy won’t affect too much.”
“But I hope there will be safety cars and that kind of thing. I have been very unlucky with safety cars this year. It would be nice if the Safety Car gives us a good chance tomorrow,” concluded the seven-time Formula 1 world champion. .
