Lewis Hamilton says his victory at the Spanish Grand Prix was a “rejuvenating experience” as he dominated the event to open a 17-point lead in the standings.
Hamilton had a mixed start to the 2018 Formula 1 campaign, taking a sole pole and win from the opening four rounds, explaining that he had not felt fully comfortable in Mercedes’ W09 across rounds in Bahrain, China and Azerbaijan.
Hamilton, though, claimed pole position at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya and went on to take an emphatic win, 20 seconds ahead of Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas.
“I think it has been a rejuvenating experience,” said Hamilton on his victory.
“People probably think it was an easy race and I was cruising but I wasn’t cruising. I was comfortable but at no point did I feel like I was going to lose it.
“I was pushing every single lap using it as a test bench to understand what I liked about the balance and how can I play with it more and how can I squeeze more out of it and do all sorts to understand what more I can get from.
“When you do the debrief like I’ve just done I can be very, very particular and to the point of what I want them to work on.
“In that meeting there are a few key points that I’ll point out, like work on this, make that better and I’ll be faster.
“The cool thing about being a world champion is the team naturally listens to what you say because you are not talking gibberish so they go away and focus on those areas, look at the data and try to work on it, it is an amazing process you do together when it comes back and it works.
“Of course they knew it would do because they said it was going to work but when they go away and do their expertise and come back on certain area on the car you’ll start to see the benefits from it.”
In contrast to his emotions in the aftermath of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, Hamilton explained that he “didn’t leave anything on the table” during the 66-lap race in Spain.
“It is the greatest feeling to come here and have that kind of performance and then win convincingly,” he said.
“That is what anybody with a win wants to do, do it that way. It is definitely a great, great feeling and I think you could probably see form my energy when I got out the car.
“To think that is my 64th [win] it still feels like a first, special and unique in its own way.
“The journey to it is why it feels unique on its own but that is encouraging for me because I’ve been racing a long time so to still have that feeling when I have that win.
“I know I did my job this weekend to the maximum and I didn’t leave anything on the table so there is no better feeling.”
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