Lewis Hamilton reflects on a disappointing Grand Prix in Singapore. The seven-time world champion showed promising pace in the run-up to the race, but after failing to qualify higher than sixth, he fell back to P7 during the race. To make matters worse, he struggled with brake issues in the final stages of the Grand Prix, ultimately dropping him to P8. Afterwards, Hamilton explained where things went wrong for Ferrari.
Hamilton was hot on the heels of Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli in the final stages of the race. Because he was on fresher tyres, teammate Charles Leclerc had already passed him. However, brake issues threw a spanner in the works for the British veteran, who let the Monegasque pass again and tried to drag his faltering Ferrari to the finish. He kept Fernando Alonso behind him, although he repeatedly exceeded track limits in the process. This earned him a five-second time penalty, allowing the Aston Martin driver to move up to P7 and leaving Hamilton stranded in eighth place.
“It was a fair race, I didn’t have a great start,” Hamilton sighed afterwards. “It was very difficult to overtake and I was a bit stuck in my position. At the end, I tried to overtake Kimi, but then the brakes just gave up. You saw the sparks on the front left – I had to back off to cool them down.” Alonso raged at Hamilton over the radio in coarse terms after the chequered flag: “I can’t believe it,” the Spaniard shouted. “It’s not safe to drive without brakes, is it?”
Victory in Qualifications
Hamilton, meanwhile, expressed that he felt the ‘pain’ of the entire team. Ferrari had to settle for P6 and P8 in Singapore. “The guys push so hard every weekend,” the Brit explained. “I empathize with the whole team, from catering to the engineers. They give a full hundred percent every weekend. But the car we have now is unfortunately not at the level of the guys in front of us, especially since they’ve had a number of upgrades and we can’t match them. We’re balancing on the edge to keep up with them.”
“During the qualification, I think we’re still not getting the full potential out of the car,” he added. After the qualification on Saturday in Singapore, Hamilton already complained about the ‘suboptimal’ performance of the Scuderia. “We didn’t do that in the previous race and not in this race either,” he clarified. “We could have been third or fourth on the grid this weekend. In addition, we were not inferior in terms of pace to the drivers in front of us during the race. But even if we improve our qualifications, the fourth place remains the highest achievable for us.”
