After a disappointing qualifying session that left Lewis Hamilton in the thirteenth position, he recovered and climbed up to sixth position during an eventful race.
The rain started falling shortly after the lights went out, and Mercedes made the mistake of remaining on slicks for too long as the track conditions deteriorated. Hamilton found himself down in P14 after eventually pitting. The seven-time world champion spoke about it post-race.
“When the rain came out, we as a team made the wrong decision, and ultimately it was a team’s call. We paid the price for that.
“Then we came out last, and then after that, I was just chasing, kept my head down; it was a really good example of when you fall, stumble, just get up, keep trying.”
Hamilton felt that the decision not to pit at the correct time hindered the team from pushing Verstappen for the lead after moving up from the back of the pack to sixth and showing tremendous speed in both dry and wet conditions.
“In those conditions, if we’d made the right call, I had the pace to be challenging the top two.
“I think we would have been challenging Max if I’m really honest.
“Particularly when we got to the dry, pace-wise, I think we weren’t terribly far off. I’m not saying that we’d beat them, but I think we would have been [close].”
Following a mistake on the car set-up on Friday that wasn’t corrected in time for qualifying, Hamilton expressed how the race felt like “redemption” for him, adding:
“I feel like today was redemption, in the sense of it was terrible yesterday; we managed to dial the car in a bit better today and overtook a bunch of people.
“I think today I had the pace. I was on pace with Max in the race; we were just out of position.
“To start 13th, I was dead last at one point; to get back up to sixth, yeah, happy with that.”
