Lewis Hamilton, Leclerc & Drivers React Post Race | 2026 Japanese Grand Prix | F1 Interview

...battles, but overall, what was your impression of your race today? Pretty terrible, ultimately, because I lost the P3 and ended up going backwards. But, yeah, I just need to understand where I was losing all the power. I just had a real lack of power through particularly the second stint. But the majority of the race, even from the beginning, I couldn't keep up with people just for the lack of power. I heard you on the radio saying, tell me where I am, where through the lap I can make changes and things. Is it... I mean, it's not your understanding of these rules because, as you were saying before, you're learning every race about the deployment and where to do this and where to do that. So is it a car or, I mean, is it less power on the straights? I don't really understand this. I'm full gas and I'm... Managing where I've been asked to manage and for some reason just lacking power today. So I need to figure out if there's something wrong with the car or not. But still, we've got some points. All right. Thank you, Lewis. Thanks. We can move around the outside of Turn 1 that we all enjoyed watching. But today was an opportunity. lost in terms of could could you have won today in different circumstances could you've got a win today do you think at all a win a bit more luck a bit more was the car good enough a lot more luck maybe like two safety cars exactly in the right place no but i don't think so i think Kimi was too strong but uh i think second place maybe was on the cards but uh not i think i think we extracted the maximum that we could and unfortunately with the safety car being I've been quite unlucky, and then Oscar was... I had a bit of air to breathe, which made him maybe a bit nicer with his tyres. I had to push straight away, which was a little bit tricky, everything. So I don't regret much. I think it was still a good race. Are we as far as what we've seen today compared to the Mercedes? I don't think so. But they still have a big advantage and it's up to us to try and change that situation. We heard some of the messages about deployment, you're asking about power, was everything okay with Curran? Is this still everyone sort of understanding these cars and Thank you. how to get the most out of them? I don't quite understand yet what happened in the first few laps. It seems that I was quite down compared to the others but it might be that it's it was just an impression and we were just deploying at different places and It's kind of complex in the first few laps, especially when everything is trying to get to its optimum place. But after that, I maybe had less the feeling of it. Surely, the Mercedes-Benz needs to have a big advantage over us at the moment. Thank you very much. This is a focus, but we must not forget that there are huge gains in developing also the chassis, the aerodynamic, putting the tyres in the right window. And all of this makes the difference. and so surely The engine, we cannot change it for now anyway, but in the meantime we get there, we need to improve absolutely everything around the car. Thank you very much. Did you enjoy that? I'm not trying to get you in trouble. There were some moves, there were some moves backwards and forwards, the car looked as though there was some performance in it, now you're close to the others. Well clearly, you know, Oscar showed a very good race today, I think even from my side to get the Ferrari again at the end, just clean air was crazy strong around here. So you know, Oscar controlled things very well from the beginning, we both had great starts which was nice. It was nice to be first and third and kind of relive that feeling. So you know, plenty of good signs, plenty of good signs from us as a team, the fact that we could have such a strong result even though we know we're still lacking in many areas. For us to still finish second and fifth, I think is a positive thing, so I think today was a good day for us as a team to kind of give a good kick to everyone, to tell them to keep the work going. Even though we haven't changed much this weekend, it's just the track suited us. We've obviously got a bit more out of the deployment and the battery and the engine side of things, so just good signs. Some things are still a struggle, you know, we both had the same complaints with the car and what the difficulties are. We know we're heading in the right track and that's a really good start. The team will be working hard between now and Miami. What will you be working on between now and Miami? Um... I mean so many things honestly. I still don't feel as comfortable as I would like to feel in the car. Thank you very much. Not an excuse but it's also slightly down just a lack of running for the time being. A lot of the situations I was in then from a degradation point of view, from a battery point of view, Some of them I was just having to figure out on the go rather than having to try it on Friday or so. It was still a good race from my side, and I think there were just little things here and there, that half a tenth here, one tenth there, half a tenth there. I was just a little bit too late in the weekend to have been able to learn them. So, yeah, good signs, but, you know, there's always stuff I can work on, there's stuff the team can work on, and together, when we're a bit stronger and I feel more confident, then I'll be very confident that I can stand on top again. Great stuff. Well, I don't think what to do, or is it still kind of tiny games and testing every single area, essentially? It's not straightforward as... I'm confident we have a direction. I'm confident we can work... Hard in every single area these five weeks. I cannot ensure you that we will be a lot more competitive in Miami, but this five-week break can give us a lot of performance midway to the end of the season if we get things sorted and execute a good five-week break. It's exactly what we needed, a bit of a reset. Refocus and come up with kind of a new plan given that everything we've done up until now clearly from 25 into 26 didn't work and we need to press the reset button. Also being honest with you excited to see what FOM and FIA come up for the new regulations that I am hopeful they will come up with something a bit better for Miami. Given the fact that the accident with Olli that we saw today, we've been warning them about this gonna This happening, this kind of closing speeds and this kind of accidents were always going to happen and I'm not very happy with what we've had up until now and hopefully we come up with a better solution that doesn't create these massive closing speeds and a safer way of going racing. I was just trying to see exactly what the closing speed was when you were looking at it on the camera and you think today might help you guys in your request to the FIA too? Yeah, that's why I was so... Surprised, you know, when they said, no, we will sort out qualifying and leave the racing alone, because it's exciting. As drivers, we've been extremely vocal that the problem is not only qualifying, it's also racing. And we've been warning that this kind of accident was always going to happen. Here, we were lucky there was a escape road. Now, imagine going to Baku or going to Singapore or going to Vegas and having this kind of closing speeds and crashes next to the walls. I Or we as the GPDA, we've warned the FIA these accidents are going to happen a lot with this set of regulations and we need to change something soon if we don't want them to happen. It was 50G I heard, it's higher than my crash in Russia in 2015, it was 46G. Just imagine what kind of crash you could have in Vegas, Baku, etc. I hope it serves as an example and the teams listen to drivers and not so much to the teams and people that said the racing was okay, because the racing is not okay. Thank you. Okay, he's clearly passionate about it. What could the FIA and FOM do? You've got a bit of pressure there from George at the end. Yeah, it was a bit of a sweaty one, this one. Obviously, with the safety car, we got a little bit unlucky. So, from that moment onwards, I knew I was a little bit on the back foot, especially compared to Kimi. And Lewis, but then I was like, okay, let's keep pushing. Let's try to keep those tires and bring them to the end. And actually, it wasn't as much of a disadvantage as I thought. The tires were actually pretty good. The few laps that I had done wasn't so bad. It's just that we lost a few positions. And then, yeah, it was quite a fun race. Just not quite enough to get Oscar, but yeah, it was a cool race. Well, well done. And Kimi, we've got a little bit of a gap. You're going to practice your clutches.