Lewis Hamilton was depressed following a challenging performance at the Singapore Grand Prix.
After the Singapore Grand Prix, Toto Wolff expressed his regret to Lewis Hamilton over the team radio. During a challenging outing in the Marina Bay heat, the British driver was left fuming over his tire strategy.
For just the fifth time this season, Hamilton finished ahead of teammate George Russell on a Saturday after qualifying in P3, but the seven-time world champion’s Grand Prix was much more difficult.
Considering that most of the field was running on medium tires, Mercedes decided to start the British driver on soft-compound tires. He struggled with his Pirelli rubber early on and was unable to pass Max Verstappen, who was in second place.
On lap 18, long before the other front-runners, Mercedes called Hamilton into pit lane, with George Russell waiting calmly behind in P4. From this point on, the 39-year-old expressed dissatisfaction with his W15 machine’s performance and excessive tyre offset.
Russell, Oscar Piastri, Charles Leclerc, and Hamilton himself, who started from P9, all managed to pass him by the time the checkered flag flew. Hamilton had fallen from third on the grid to sixth on the road.
Following the race, team principal Wolff expressed regret. He apologized on the radio, saying, “Yeah, Lewis. “Obviously, we misread the race, but it wouldn’t have mattered because we gave you a car that wasn’t good enough here. We simply moved slowly today.”
Peter Bonnington, the race engineer, also offered his driver some consoling words. “That’s P6, Lewis mate,” he clarified. “We were really shot in the foot there with that tyre gamble.”
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