Lewis Hamilton hit out at “yapping” critics after taking his first win for Ferrari in the sprint race at the Chinese Grand Prix.
The seven-time champion followed up his win in only his second event for his new team with fifth place on the grid for Sunday’s main event but said he was “optimistic” of a good result.
Hamilton did not identify the people he was referring to but said they “lacked understanding” of how difficult it was to achieve success straight away with a new team.
The 40-year-old said: “People just love to be negative at any opportunity. Even with the smallest things, they’ll just be negative about it.
“That’s just the difficult time that we’re living in.
“I see certain individuals – and again, I don’t read the news, but I see bits here and there – see people that I’ve admired for years just talking out of turn.
“Clearly some of them really just making uneducated guesses of what’s going on, just a real lack of appreciation.
“The amount of critics and people I’ve heard yapping along the way just clearly not understanding. Maybe because they never had the experience or just unaware.”
Hamilton had a difficult first race for Ferrari in Australia last weekend, qualifying eighth and finishing 10th.
But he took pole for the sprint event in Shanghai on Friday and followed it up with a dominant win in the sprint, leading home McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.
“I felt unusually calm in myself,” Hamilton said. “I would say definitely more so than usual. I’m generally a relatively calm person, but I think today there was a stillness in me that I haven’t felt for a long time
“I got in the car extra early because I just wanted to be present and enjoy it because I haven’t been there for a while. Good start. Challenging race.
“It’s hard to put into words what it feels like. Obviously it’s a sprint race. It’s not the main race. But even just to get that is just a good stepping stone to where I’m working towards.”
Ferrari made some changes to their car after the sprint, and other teams maximised their own result to leave Hamilton and team-mate Charles Leclerc together on the third row.
Piastri took pole from Mercedes’ George Russell and Lando Norris, who won in Australia for McLaren.
Verstappen is fourth on the grid for the grand prix, ahead of Hamilton and Leclerc.
Hamilton said: “We made some changes to improve race performance., It was definitely harder over a single lap.
“The car became quite snappy. The lap wasn’t as clean at the end. I probably should have been 0.2secs further up or maybe 0.1secs. We’re not too far away but not ideal.
“I feel optimistic for tomorrow, would like to get a good start and jump at least one car. And then slowly work my way up. Tonight I will make a masterplan and then I have to try and execute it.”
Leclerc said: “As a team we maximised the potential of the car but the most important thing is we understand where has gone the potential of the car.”
