Lewis Hamilton says beating Red Bulls will be very hard in Germany
Last updated on .From the section Formula 1
Lewis Hamilton believes he has a chance to beat the Red Bulls to German Grand Prix victory but predicts to do so will be "very hard".
Hamilton took pole position for Mercedes ahead of Red Bull drivers Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber.
Hamilton said: "I anticipate they will both be strong. Of course it will help if we can get into Turn One in the lead and try to hold them behind.
"We have [tyre] degradation issues but I don't think it's impossible."
Hamilton led the British Grand Prix from pole position for the first seven laps last Sunday until suffering a tyre failure, and afterwards said he felt he could have won.
Both Hamilton and Mercedes team boss Ross Brawn admitted on Friday that the Red Bulls looked stronger than the Mercedes when they did their race-simulation runs in second practice.
Hamilton said: "I think it's going to be very hard. The Red Bulls have obviously made a step this weekend. I think a lot of teams have made a step forwards.
"Webber said to me that these tyres seem to work really well on his car so I think perhaps they have had, who knows, potentially they have gained a better advantage than we have by switching tyres. His long run was very strong the other day."
Pirelli have brought a new type of tyre to this race in an attempt to avoid the problems experienced at Silverstone, when six drivers suffered tyre failures during the race. There have been no problems so far this weekend.
Hamilton set the pace in first practice on Friday morning but struggled for pace in the second and third sessions, lagging half a second behind team-mate Nico Rosberg, before a set-up change on his car ahead of qualifying put him back in contention.
The team reverted Hamilton's mechanical set-up to where it had been on Friday morning but changed some of the electronic settings to new ones.
Hamilton said: "The car is obviously, as Nico has showed, great to drive. But trying to get a nice balance is not as easy.
"Nico has been here a long time and is used to the formalities and working with the engineers. For me I'm still finding it a little bit difficult to find my way.
"We were lost. We went from one end of the spectrum to the other and it went from huge understeer to huge oversteer.
"Usually if you don't have it right at the end of P3 you're stuffed. I really thought I was going to struggle to get into the top 10 with the balance I had. We made some big, big changes all round. I went fingers crossed into qualifying and the car felt great from the first lap, something I could really do something with."
He ended up beating Vettel by 0.103secs with the very last lap of qualifying.
Rosberg will start 11th after he failed to progress beyond the second knock-out session because the team underestimated how much other drivers would improve. The German dropped from second to 11th in the last four minutes of the session.
"It's tough, yeah," he said. "It's one of those days in sport that are really horrible so it's very difficult to digest."
Brawn said: "We were obviously very keen to keep two sets of [the faster] 'option' [tyres] for final qualifying, so we only wanted to use one set in Q2.
"To be honest, we thought the time was good enough. It was right at the end and we got caught out by the fact it got a lot quicker at the end of Q2.
"The wind dropped and the track seemed to pick up grip. The cars were going quite a lot quicker and by then we had no time to react.
"We were just biting our nails and we were just one place out, it was a misjudgement."
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"Good race Hamsy you recovered well to finish fifth."
Yeah he recovered well from pole position. True grit. ; )
MY wish is for Hamilton and Button to be on the podium, even if I do have only the highlights to watch.
Please give it a rest, your insults & repetitive prattle is so boring..
I mean Man, its like we do not speak a language anymore Man, and only want to appeal to Chav Man and those type of people are my only fans Man and tyres Man no one else complains as much about them as I do Man. My only vice Man as with out moaning I would be a bitter and lonely MAN.
'Hamilton unhappy with revised tyres'.
Happy when on pole, in a fast car, it's all 'Hamilton's skill' people say, not that I disagree.
When he walks out a grand-prix in a poor position, it's the cars fault.
Spot on, no one wins a WDC through luck.
All these guys have faults on and off the track but deserve some basic respect in what they have achieved.
"@174 copy & pasting isnt proof you can read"
Now I know you are deffo not too bright...come on, nappy on and in your cot please!!!!
Think you nailed it.
I) doesn't like a former WDC champion for some reason
II) no one comments on his favourite
At least he's balanced in one respect in that he's got a chip on both shoulders
lol it s not an issue where you rank him, i kuldnt care less
it s the jibes at him that i will never understand with people like you! You especially cuz you prefer PDR a driver we seldom mention here so it s not even like you wuld feel aggrieved that other fans been bad mouthing ur favourite
Do you see what I mean at all?
lol now I am a little gal
I never asked you to like the man, just asked to give him his dues like u do vettell
instead you choose to post comments with digs at him in almost all ur comments. nd now u insult me for how dare I ask these things
you see what I mean about wasting time
we will agree to disagree about his greatness but tell me more about this arrogance of his plz