Lewis Hamilton vows to capitalise on Max Verstappen's power unit punishment

Hamilton, F1, Russia, Mercedes — Photo: © LAT Images

Russian Grand Prix

Hamilton vows to capitalise on Verstappen's power unit punishment

Hamilton goes into the Russian GP five points adrift

Ian Parkes

Friday 24 September 2021 16:01

Lewis Hamilton has vowed to capitalise on Max Verstappen's power unit grid penalty for this weekend's Russian Grand Prix.

Verstappen will start from the back of the Sochi Autodrom field after Red Bull opted to take a fourth PU for the Dutchman's RB16B.

With Verstappen already serving a three-place penalty for his collision with Hamilton in the Italian Grand Prix, and on a track where overtaking is possible, Red Bull has unsurprisingly decided to act.

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It is now over to Hamilton to react and ensure he punishes Verstappen, who holds a five-point lead in the drivers' standings.

Assessing Verstappen's penalty, Hamilton said: "It doesn't really change anything for us, we've just got to do our thing and focus on moving forward.

"It's a tough year for everyone with reliability, so we've got to naturally capitalise on that, get the maximum result. A one-two would be spectacular for us as a team."

One-two was the finishing order in each of the two practice sessions, albeit with Valtteri Bottas ahead of Hamilton on both occasions on a circuit he loves.

"If you look at the list of tracks there are some that are super exceptional and that are generally Valtteri circuits, and some vice versa," assessed Hamilton.

"This is an okay track for me. It's not my best track but it's not my worst, but there are definitely things I can pinpoint from the data.

"It's more with set up mostly, and probably a little bit with the driving, so I'll work on things tonight."

Overall, Hamilton was happy with his day's work, adding: "It seems like we've started off on the right foot.

"As we always try and progress, the first run in the first session was the best, and we've been migrating and adjusting since and it's not been as good as that one as we started to push more, I guess.

"But generally a good session pace-wise. We've got some work to do, probably on the long run.

"Tomorrow's going to be raining a lot, a big wet day so it will be interesting to see what we do in terms of set up for that knowing that potentially Sunday is dry.

"But we definitely ticked off everything we could through the sessions, very clean sessions, no issues.

"We made the changes we wanted, the car's not perfect but we will work on it."