After a late pit stop at the British Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton expressed clear frustration—the Brit lost second place as a result
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 wouldn’t have pitted if he had been aware of the consequences.
Seven-time world champion Hamilton was trailing his Ferrari teammate and eventual race winner Charles Leclerc when the race was neutralized by the safety car in the closing stages after Max Verstappen slid off the track at Stowe and his Red Bull had to be recovered from the gravel trap.
In anticipation of a restart, both Ferraris pitted for fresh tires. While Leclerc had enough of a lead to retain the race lead, Hamilton was overtaken by Russell, who had decided to stay on the track.
End Under Yellow
Although the race stewards had completed the cleanup at Stowe, the race ended in chaos behind the safety car after the lapped cars were allowed to rejoin the race on lap 51 of 52. The regulations stipulate that a full lap must be completed following such an instruction from race control.
When asked if he regretted the pit stop, since he lost his position on the track and the race was not restarted, Hamilton replied: “The team asked me to pit. When I pitted, I assumed we would hold the position. If they had told me, ‘You’re pitting and you’ll lose your position,’ I wouldn’t have done it.”
The loss of position capped off a frustrating race for Hamilton, who had shot past championship leader Andrea Kimi Antonelli at the start but then flinched before the lights went out, earning him a five-second penalty.
Messed up big time
From then on, the nine-time Silverstone winner fell back behind Leclerc and found himself in the crosshairs of Antonelli, who—just as he had in Saturday’s Sprint race—worked his way past Hamilton, even though the Mercedes driver later dropped out of the battle for the top spots due to a damaged wheel cover.
Commenting on his false start, Hamilton said: “That was pretty bad right from the start. I aborted the start, which I’ve done very rarely in the roughly 380 races I’ve driven.”
“My hand just moved on its own. I don’t really know where it was going. I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t even tell my hand to do it. But anyway, these things happen.”
Different balance than Leclerc
Commenting on his race as a whole, he added: “As far as the balance goes, I noticed that Charles had changed his balance—I think he set up more wing compared to qualifying—and I felt that the car was extremely oversteering with the differential settings I’d chosen.”
“That’s why I took wing off, and then I had massive understeer at the start of the race. So he just pulled away from me. I could barely turn the car in until the middle of the first stint. It wasn’t until I made some differential changes that I managed to turn the car in a bit better, but by then the gap was already huge. And then there were the five seconds lost at the pit stop, and one thing just led to another.”