Ferrari star Lewis Hamilton makes it clear: “That’s simply not good enough for me”

With his decision not to pit during a late virtual safety car period, Lewis Hamilton squandered what had seemed a certain podium finish at the Singapore Grand Prix. The seven-time world champion fell back in the closing stages of the race because he was on old tyres. He crossed the finish line in sixth place. His team-mate Charles Leclerc demonstrated what might have been by finishing second. Like Hamilton, the Monegasque driver had been instructed by the pit wall to pull in for a tyre change. And unlike his team-mate, he complied with this instruction.

When asked in the paddock at the Circuit of the Americas whether he would now be hesitant to defy instructions from the Ferrari team strategists, the record-holding Grand Prix winner responded with a detailed self-analysis. “First and foremost, I want to emphasise that you learn from these experiences. I rarely find myself in this position. Of course, the next few days didn’t feel so good, but you live to learn,” he began.

Memories of Zandvoort

“When I took my position on the starting grid, I knew I’d probably finish third, but I always try to go for the win. I then want to take a different approach and I wanted a different strategy to Charles so I wouldn’t just have to follow him. The prediction was that Max would probably be too fast, and that we’d both finish in second and third place. And that’s simply not enough for me,” the 41-year-old Briton made clear.

“I wanted to have an option and see what might have been possible had the tyres not deteriorated. If the medium tyres had lasted longer, it would have been possible to run on them for longer. But that wasn’t the case, and I didn’t exactly feel great during the first stint. Then, after the pit stop, I came out onto the track behind Charles and lost a lot of time at the start because he was on the slower tyres. I, on the other hand, had good pace on the softs, and the scenario was similar to that at Zandvoort,” Hamilton explained.

Ferrari star Lewis Hamilton praises improvement

“I was heading towards the pit lane and didn’t know that Charles was going to change tyres, because I thought he’d only just turned in for his stop. It was a decision made in a fraction of a second. Even as I was level with the pit lane, I realised it had probably been the wrong decision. But I took it on the chin, took responsibility for it, and then you look ahead again,” the 106-time Grand Prix winner added defiantly.”

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And Hamilton went on to explain: “We’ve had good discussions about how we can work together better and what we can improve. But I don’t think anything has changed in the way we work behind the scenes. I truly believe that my job is not always to follow every instruction straight away, but to challenge myself and the team. That’s how I’ve become the person I am today. That’s why I don’t want to give that up. Sometimes things don’t go so well, and that was the case here. But you just keep fighting, and we win and lose as a team. We bear the consequences together. Of course, it hurts when I drop points for the team. It doesn’t happen very often, but I’ll now be working twice as hard to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”