Lewis Hamilton: Thank you to the team for believing in me!

      The Barcelona-Catalonia Grand Prix was Lewis Hamilton's 31st race for Ferrari, and the seven-time world champion achieved a very important victory today, which caused a real storm of excitement in the stands of the Montmelo racetrack. Charles Leclerc did not finish due to hydraulic issues but was classified fifteenth. Lewis Hamilton (1st): "First of all, I have to thank everyone in my team – everyone who works on the track and at the base in Maranello, as well as Fred Vasseur for believing in me and for inviting me to this team. I dreamed of such success, although it seemed almost impossible last year – but I never lost hope, and the team continued to support me. We constantly changed things, made improvements, but even more importantly, I have such an army of fans that any athlete could only dream of – overall, I am grateful to everyone! Every victory is unique in its own way, but this one will hold a very special place. In my youth, I watched races on TV that Scuderia won. When I became a Formula 1 driver, I was always curious about the emotions a person feels when winning behind the wheel of a red car – and now I know! The team did an enormous amount of work, and everyone truly deserved this success, for which I am immensely grateful! This is just the first victory, but I hope there will be many more ahead. Today, the pit stops were precise and coordinated, and the strategy was chosen correctly. The car worked wonderfully. But I also prepared and trained very hard to stand on the top of the podium today. I worked a lot, although it happened behind the scenes, and the team helped me gain confidence as we continued to change things on the car. It’s important that they believed in me and trusted my decisions and everything I asked for. And we gradually began to notice that everything was coming together. I am just very happy; I love what I do – nothing compares to driving a Formula 1 car! Of course, I accept this result, although there is still a long way to go, and Mercedes is still very fast. But we will continue to work and try to catch up with them. Undoubtedly, the battle is not over yet." Charles Leclerc (15th): "I had a Brake-by-Wire failure, and the power steering stopped working. I was going into the second corner when the power steering suddenly failed – that’s when my race ended. I don’t want to take any credit for this race. I mean, I don’t think I played any role at all. Lewis and the team did all the work and won on their own. Of course, I could have stayed ahead of Lewis for another two or three corners, but that would have been foolish on my part. Lewis won with an incredible gap of 20 seconds. He was amazing this past weekend. Lewis is in great shape and fully deserves this result. Now it’s my turn to step up, find confidence in the car, and put all the pieces together. I hope the next race weekends will go smoothly, as the last four were not entirely clean, including from a technical standpoint. I had too many problems, so I hope to have clean races ahead, find my rhythm, and get back into the fight at the front."