Lewis Hamilton Reflects On First 2023 Podium: "Three World Champions in the Top 3!"

Lewis Hamilton finishes P2 in the most dramatic race of the season so far.

"I didn't expect to be second," Lewis Hamilton says in the post-Australian Grand Prix interview with David Coulthard after an exciting, chaotic, and somewhat disastrous Sunday.  

The British Mercedes driver started in P3, but thanks to a bit of luck and some good driving finished his Melbourne campaign in P2 behind race winner Max Verstappen. After complaints from the Brackley team about poor performance from the W14, this comes as a surprise and a huge confidence boost - something they'll very much need for the following races.

"I was gonna say a huge thank you to everyone here in Australia and Melbourne for having us, I've had the best week here this week and the weather has been amazing today.

"eally unlucky for George today on our side -- we got to look into our reliability which has generally been really good. So that's really unfortunate.

"But otherwise, to get those points is really amazing today. I definitely didn't expect to be on second. So I'm super grateful for it. 

"I still feel uncomfortable in the car, though. You know, the car's still not... I don't feel connected to it. So I'm driving as best I can with that disconnect and I'm working as hard as I can to try and create that that connect but I think it's a long project.

"But still, considering we've been down on performance - we're clearly down on straight pace compared to the Red Bulls - for us to be up here fighting with Aston, this is just amazing at this point in the season, and we just got to keep on keep on fighting.

"Big, big thank you to all the people back to the factory. Let's keep pushing. We can close that gap. It's going to be tough but not impossible.

Hamilton was further asked about his tyres, and whether he was bluffing about his endurance on the hard Pirellis. 

"I definitely wasn't bluffing. I was having to push a lot to keep it right in the beginning obviously to keep Max behind and then Fernando was pushing you know.

"They're very, very quick, so I think ultimately he was a little bit quicker today behind me but I just managed to hold him off so for that I'm really grateful.

"And also just... what a legend... we've got a world champion up ahead, we've got three world champions in the top three, that's pretty much mega!"

Bad luck for George Russell today as he leaves the race early with a power unit failure. But all things considered, things are looking very good for the Mercedes team.