(Motorsport-Total.com) – During the late safety car phase at the British Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton made a second pit stop, which caused him to lose second place to George Russell. In hindsight, he admitted that he would not have come to the pits if he had been aware of this consequence.
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The seven-time world champion Hamilton was behind his Ferrari teammate and eventual race winner Charles Leclerc when the race was neutralized in the final phase with the safety car after Max Verstappen had slid off the track at Stowe and his Red Bull had to be recovered from the gravel trap.
Expecting a restart, both Ferraris came to the pits for fresh tires. While Leclerc had enough of a lead to keep the race lead, Hamilton was overtaken by Russell, who had decided to stay out on track.
End under yellow
Although the cleanup at Stowe was completed by the marshals, the race ended behind the safety car in chaos after the lapped cars were allowed to unlap themselves on lap 51 of 52. The regulations stipulate that after this instruction from race control, a full lap must be completed.
When asked if he regretted the stop since he lost position on track and the race was not restarted, Hamilton replied: “The team asked me to stop. I assumed during the stop that we would keep the position. If they had told me: ‘You stop and lose your position,’ I wouldn’t have done it.”
The loss of position crowned a frustrating race for Hamilton, who had shot past championship leader Andrea Kimi Antonelli at the start but had twitched before the lights went out, which earned him a five-second penalty.
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Strongly messed up
From then on, the nine-time Silverstone winner fell back behind Leclerc and fell into the clutches of Antonelli, who – as in the sprint on Saturday – worked his way past Hamilton, although the Mercedes driver later dropped out of the fight for the front places due to a damaged wheel cover.
Regarding his start offense, Hamilton explained: “That was pretty bad from the start. I aborted the start, which I have only very rarely done in the roughly 380 races I have driven.”
“My hand just moved like that. I don’t really know where it wanted to go. I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t even give my hand the command to do it. But anyway, it happens.”
Balance different than Leclerc’s
About his race as a whole, he added: “Regarding the balance, I noticed that Charles changed his balance, I think compared to qualifying he set more wing, and I felt that the car with the chosen differential settings was extremely oversteering.”
“That’s why I took wing away and then had massive understeer at the start of the race. So he just pulled away from me. I could hardly steer the car until the middle of the first stint. Only through some differential changes was I able to steer the car a bit better, but by then the gap was already huge. And then the five seconds at the stop, and then one thing led to another.”