Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton had admitted that he feels “so grateful” to finish third in a dramatic 2022 British Grand Prix.
Hamilton improved from fifth on the grid to third at the first race start only for the red flag to be immediately deployed, following a huge incident involving his teammate – George Russell which meant that the grid order was reset.
On the second start, Hamilton initially slipped to sixth but once he cleared McLaren’s Lando Norris, Hamilton benefitted from reliability issues for both Red Bull drivers and infighting between Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc to claim the lead briefly once the latter pair pitted.
A slow pit stop due to a front-left tyre change issue however saw the Brit’s hopes of a record ninth win fade as he fell behind both Leclerc and Sainz, until a Safety Car on Lap 39 enabled him to switch to the soft tyres and try fight for the win.
A slow restart however left him to be beaten to second by Red Bull’s resurgent Sergio Perez as Sainz took a maiden victory, whilst Leclerc finished fourth following a scrappy battle against Perez and Hamilton in the closing laps.
Reflecting on his battle against both Ferrari drivers, Hamilton admitted that the Scuderia pair “were just too quick” in the end, despite hunting them down with fresher hard tyres until the Safety Car flipped the race’s direction on its head.
Hamilton though feels “so, so grateful” that his new upgrade marked “a step closer” towards fighting Ferrari and Red Bull for victory, as he vowed to continue pushing for the win as he looks to avoid going through a season without a victory for the first time in his F1 career.
Explaining where he believed the prospect of victory got away from his grasp, Hamilton said: “We lost a little bit of time in the pit stop, and then I was chasing, and chasing, and chasing, but the pace was great on both sets of tyres and then at the end there it was just a little bit difficult.”
Hamilton added that despite progress being achieved with a second consecutive podium, he still believes that Mercedes has “… got some improvements to make” on his side of the garage.
Russell meanwhile failed to finish in the top five for the first time this season after he was caught up in one of two opening corner incidents, as he unintentionally flipped Alfa Romeo’s Guanyu Zhou over and sent the Chinese driver rolling into the catch-fencing at Abbey.
The 24 year-old Brit explained that his mistake in Qualifying meant that he opted to gamble on hard tyres from eighth on the grid, yet was returned with “very little grip” at the start which meant that he was “swamped” prior to being clipped by AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly.
Gasly’s touch ultimately sent Russell sliding helplessly into Zhou, who was unable to prevent his car rolling at high-speed, although all three drivers escaped without harm despite Russell and Zhou being eliminated on the spot whilst Gasly later retired with damage.
Russell though had hoped to continue due to only having a puncture but his car had been removed by marshals, despite them being asked not to touch the car whilst he checked with Mercedes which meant that he wasn’t able to take the restart.
Explaining his feelings on the marshals’ actions, Russell said: “It was obviously frustrating for my race because the car just had the puncture and there’s no doubt we had the pace to come back to P6 today but I’m just glad that Zhou was OK.”
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