Lewis Hamilton has conceded he wouldn’t have pitted for a second time under the late safety car at the British Grand Prix had he known he would have lost second place to George Russell.
Seven-time champion Hamilton had been behind Ferrari team-mate and eventual race winner Charles Leclerc when the race was neutralised in the closing stages after Max Verstappen crashed at Stowe, his Red Bull needing to be retrieved from the gravel.
Anticipating a restart, both Ferraris pitted for fresh tyres and while Leclerc had a buffer to return in the lead of the race, Hamilton was jumped by Russell, who had opted to remain on track.
Despite the cleanup work at Stowe being completed by the marshals, the race ended behind the safety car in a state of confusion after backmarkers were allowed to unlap themselves on lap 51 of 52, with the regulations stating a full lap must then be completed following that instruction was given by race control.
Asked whether he regretted stopping given he lost track position with no resumption forthcoming, Hamilton replied: “The team asked me to stop. I assumed in stopping that we would be holding position.
“If they told me, ‘You’re stopping and you’re losing position’, I wouldn’t have done it.”
The lost position capped a frustrating race for Hamilton, who had launched past championship leader Kimi Antonelli at the start, only after a twitch before the lights went out left him with a five-second penalty.
Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes, Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari
Photo by: Colin McMaster / LAT Images via Getty Images
From there, the nine-time Silverstone winner fell back from Leclerc and into the clutches of Antonelli who, like Saturday’s sprint, worked his way past Hamilton for track position – though the Mercedes driver would later fall out of contention with a damaged wheel shield.
Addressing his start transgression, Hamilton explained: “Pretty bad from the get-go. I jumped the start, which I have done very few times in the 380-odd races that I’ve done.
“My hand just moved just like that. Don’t really know where it went. I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t even tell my hand to do it. But anyway, it happens.”
On his race as a whole, he added: “Balance-wise, I noticed Charles went up on his balance, I think compared to qualifying, added more wing, and I felt the car was really oversteering with the diff settings that we had had.
“And so, I took out wing and then I had the biggest understeer at the beginning of the race. So, he just pulled away from me. I just couldn’t even turn the car until halfway kind of through that first stint, I managed to start turning the car a little bit better with some diff changes, but by then the gap was already huge. And then the five seconds at the stop, and then there’s just one thing after the other.”
