“I would have finished higher” : Lewis Hamilton Lewis Hamilton rues missed chances at Dutch GP
The seven-time world champion had an off Dutch Grand Prix, as he was surprisingly eliminated in the Q2 itself. While the Briton had an impressive recovery drive in Zandvoort after receiving a three-place grid drop for impeding Red Bulls’ Sergio Perez in Q1, it was ultimately not enough.
The Briton began the race from position 15th instead of 12th, which already got him frustrated ahead of Q2, and revealed that he had already accepted defeat.
“It just went downhill like a domino effect from the moment with Checo [Perez], then the balance just got more and more snappy, more and more ‘oversteery’ – it was terrible.” Lewis Hamilton before being hit with the grid penalty.
“It’s definitely very, very frustrating, naturally, but it is what it is. It’s kind of the weekend done, and I’ll have to move on to next week [at Monza].” the Briton added.
The 39-year-old started off on the soft tyre to make up early ground, and then switched back to the hard ones, before taking another set of softs during pit stop. Hamilton also almost caught on his fellow teammate George Russell, but in the end had to settle for an unfortunate eighth position.
“We planned to do a two stop and started on the soft, it was a very good tyre, the soft tyre felt better than the medium tyre on practice day. The hard tyre was fairly decent, it was really difficult to see what I needed to do whether to push – I was on a two – so trying to use up the tyre but wasn’t sure whether or not we might go for a one.” the veteran explained.
“I had a bit of a lock up which meant I had to stay on my strategy. Probably if I’d have done one stop I might have managed it a bit better, maybe finish one place ahead,” Hamilton added.
Lewis Hamilton blames his qualification error for poor weekend
After receiving the penalty for impeding Sergio Perez, the Briton did not give up and had some pretty strong runs which helped him get back up to the eighth spot. He was often the fastest driver on track and also revealed his recovery drive to be ‘fun’.
“If I just qualified like I should’ve qualified and if I didn’t have a problem in qualifying, then yeah [I would have finished higher], I think I had the pace today to easily, definitely [finish] in the top 5. If I started fourth for example then I would’ve finished at least fourth.” The 39-year-old told the media present at the track.
After a harsh yet disappointing race where the veteran showed a lot of promise, he will have to move on and display his recently improved performances with the resurged AMG Petronas next week in the Italian Grand Prix held in Monza, in the hope to bounce back to pole positions.
