Lewis Hamilton eager to see Mercedes improvement as Spanish GP weekend begins

7-time Formula 1 world champion Lewis Hamilton has said that he is looking forward to seeing what progress Mercedes have made with the W13 at the Spanish Grand Prix as they introduce several updates to the car.

Many are touting this weekend as zero hour for the ‘zeropod’ concept that the team has run since the start of the season, with them bringing updates to Barcelona in a bid to try and get on top of the issues they’ve had with porpoising and unlock some of the potential they think the car has got.

Indeed, Barcelona is a perfect time to see what progress has been made and, for Merc, it gets even better than that as winter testing here in Catalunya saw them running the old-spec of their car where they had far more pronounced sidepods.

It’s time to see whether to stick or twist for Mercedes, then, and Hamilton is looking forward to seeing what unfolds this weekend in Spain:

“Every time I arrive at a weekend, I’m hoping that the prospects are good,” he told reporters on Friday morning here in Catalunya.

“We’re working as hard as we can as a team to progress and we have some upgrades.

“It’s a great test track here.

“The first time we drove the car, we have the data from that and can remember the feeling we had from that at the same time as well.

“We did have bouncing back then also but it will be interesting to see the parallels and how much we have progressed since.”

Mercedes showed that they do have pace in that W13 last time out in Miami as they ran strongly on Friday but, with them describing the car as a ‘diva’, it stayed true to its word and lost ground on Saturday and Sunday Stateside.

Upgrade central at the #SpanishGP this weekend. Mercedes face what could be d-day for their ‘zeropod’ design whilst Aston Martin