Hamilton “very, very shocked” by Mercedes’ orders during the Hungarian GP
After the Hungarian Grand Prix F1 where he finished in 3rd position, ahead of his teammate Nico Rosberg, Lewis Hamilton reflected on the order that Mercedes gave him during the race, saying he was "shocked."
The Hungarian Grand Prix race was marked by the duel between the two Mercedes drivers, about twenty laps from the finish.
Lewis Hamilton, on medium tires with no stop to make, was less than three seconds behind Fernando Alonso, fighting for the victory. Meanwhile, Nico Rosberg was on soft tires at the end of his stint and would have to stop again. The Mercedes team, estimating that the two men were not in the same race, asked the Briton to let his teammate pass.
However, the 2008 World Champion did not take it that way. On the radio, he said, “I’m not going to let him pass, if he gets close enough to overtake, he can overtake.” Meanwhile, the German was wondering why his teammate wasn’t letting him overtake.
After the race, immediately, Lewis Hamilton reflected on this situation. For him, the two men were in the same race: “Obviously, I am aware that I was in the same race as him; just because he had one more stop than me didn’t mean I wasn’t in the same race,” he explained to Autosport. “If I had let him pass, then he could have widened the gap and caught up with me later.”
At the finish line, the two men were separated by half a second, after a three-way battle for victory among Daniel Ricciardo, Fernando Alonso, and Lewis Hamilton allowed Nico Rosberg to quickly catch up following his last pit stop.
“I was very, very shocked that the team asked me to do that,” confides driver No. 44. “He wasn’t close enough to overtake, I wasn’t going to slow down and lose time on Fernando and Daniel, so it was a bit strange.”
On an accounting level, Hamilton is therefore ahead of Rosberg whereas they were separated by 21 places at the start. Although he is still 11 points behind his teammate, the championship leader, he believes it’s a lesser evil: « It’s a damage limitation. I was just pushing as hard as I could to go as high as I could. »
« I can’t explain the pain you feel when you have problems like I had in the last races. It’s hard to swallow, and [difficult] to come back the next day and attack. You attack beyond what you would want to do if you were in pole position. It’s satisfying to come back, to be in front, and to always be in the fight is always encouraging, » he concluded.
