Lewis Hamilton crushes Ferrari Belgian Grand Prix hopes with ‘same car’ swipe

F1 legend Lewis Hamilton has tempered expectations over Ferrari's new rear suspension at this weekend's Belgian Grand Prix.

The seven-time champion will take to the iconic legacy track at Spa-Francorchamps for not one but two races this weekend, as the 13th round of the campaign also marks the return of the sprint race.

Hamilton's first and only win in red came at Shanghai earlier this season in the Chinese GP sprint race and as the format returns for the third time this year in Spa, many had been hoping Ferrari's upgrades would bolster his chances of returning to the podium.

However, speaking in Thursday’s FIA press conference, Hamilton responded to questions over the excitement around Ferrari heading into Spa and rather downplayed the impact the new rear suspension could have on performance.

Press conference host Tom Clarkson questioned the Ferrari star over the new parts expected on the SF-25 which were ‘tested’ in Mugello last week.

Hamilton quickly corrected Clarkson, saying: "Well we didn’t test, it was a photo shoot day basically so, we did like 10 laps, 14 laps of filming, which was not a test."

Clarkson then enquired in response: "Granted, but how did the car feel?" Hamilton bluntly replied: "The same as before."

Ferrari catch up to rivals with F1 upgrades

When further questioned if this weekend could mark the moment fans finally get to see what the SF-25 is capable of, Hamilton gave an honest answer, saying: "No, I think, well firstly we’ll get to test the suspension tomorrow [Friday], I’m sure there’s going to be learnings from it, we’ll figure out how to fine tune it and to try to extract performance from it.

"On the simulator there’s no difference but I’m sure across different circuits perhaps there will be benefits," he admitted.

The former Mercedes star then swiftly moved on to focus on a rare positive during what has been a fairly unremarkable debut season with the Scuderia so far, although he did pinpoint his surprise over the Italian F1 team's approach to bringing upgrades to a race weekend.

"For me, the positive thing is arriving at the filming day where you see that new bits are coming, you see that we are getting development because in general, we had an upgraded floor in Bahrain, then it was quite some time before we got another upgrade, I think it was Austria, so pace wise it wasn’t necessarily to what I thought we would have.

"If you look at some of the other teams they bring small pieces every single weekend like Red Bull often do or Mercedes do for example whereas these are more like big chunks along the way. I think I was just clearly happy to see there is a big push back at the factory, there are a lot of changes and then to see the result of those changes takes time.

"I was just really grateful to see that we’ve got new parts, we’ll try and put them to use this weekend," the seven-time champion concluded.

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