Sir Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen smiled as the Briton aimed a gentle dig at the Dutchman during the post-race press conference in Canada.
Hamilton and Mercedes team-mate George Russell have been struggling with “porpoising” and bouncing this season, and the bottoming out became so bad in Baku that the seven-time champion struggled to get out of his car after the race due to back pain.
The FIA introduced a new directive this weekend that teams will be asked to raise their ride height if their oscillating movement goes over a certain amount, and this is due to the long-term health impacts that the abrasion with the track surface can have.
Max Verstappen was against this in the Friday press conference, and the general perspective from the Red Bull camp is that Mercedes can soften the bouncing by raising their ride height anyway, but this would affect their performance in the corners.
From a performance standpoint, there is a feeling among Ferrari and Red Bull that they should not be punished for getting the new technical regulations right, but Hamilton affirmed on Friday that there is a bigger issue at play than pace.
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“Obviously in front of you, it’s one thing, and another in the background, sometimes people say different things,” he told reporters.
Hamilton finished third in Canada behind Verstappen and Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, who himself has warned of the physical consequences of bouncing this year.
The Silver Arrows seemed to be able to find a way to run the car higher in qualifying and the race in Montreal without suffering too much bouncing, so the Briton hopes it will be a similar story in Silverstone in a fortnight.
“I think we’re better in the medium and high-speed corners than we are in the low-speed corners, but we have bouncing so I don’t know how it’s going to be through Copse and all those places,” explained Hamilton in the post-race press conference.
“Max doesn’t know what I’m talking about,” he added, turning to a grinning Verstappen.
“But I know Carlos knows what I’m saying, so it will be interesting for us there. I’m really excited to get back to the UK, the weather is incredible right now so I hope it’s the same.”
After the race, the 37-year-old talked Sky Sports’ Rachel Brookes through the emotions of qualifying fourth and finishing third in Canada after a consistently strong weekend at last.
“I want to say a big shout-out to my team back home,” said Hamilton.
“The women and men are working so hard weekend in, weekend out and it’s so difficult for us all to be working, working, working [and] not always seeing progress.
“It’s been such a difficult year for me personally, and in the car.
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“Qualifying yesterday was emotional for me and Ang [Angela Cullen, Hamilton’s friend and physiotherapist], back in the garage we were like ‘wow, this is beautiful for us.’
“We’ve been working so hard, and then to have a strong race today just gives me so much hope and confidence that we can move forwards.
“There is potential in this car, it’s not currently where we want it to be, but it’s just got a really small working window.
“If you don’t get it perfect, it’s all over the place and that’s the really, really hard thing to navigate through.
“I think we did a great job this weekend.”
Hamilton’s P3 in Canada was his second of the season, with the first arriving all the way in the first round of the season in Bahrain.