Despite initially qualifying well for the Singapore Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton ultimately crossed the finish line in sixth place. The British driver lost three positions over sixty-two laps, blaming his team, Mercedes, for implementing the wrong strategy by having him start on soft tyres. “I was so angry,” Hamilton reacted afterwards.
“It wasn’t fun,” Lewis Hamilton said about the Singapore Grand Prix. “In the run-up to the race, the team had already said they wanted to apply two different strategies. I was a bit surprised; we usually only split our strategies if someone qualifies outside the top ten. I indicated as often as possible that I wanted to start on mediums, but the team kept saying I had to start on the red tyre. I was so angry. Actually, I was frustrated from that moment on.
“I had to go in for a pit stop in the seventeenth lap,” Lewis Hamilton continued. “From that moment on, my race was over – the hard tyre would just become a problem in the heat. We had been struggling with the balance of the car all weekend. The qualification was great, but unfortunately, the race was just too heavy for us.”
‘Wrong Choice’
Team boss Toto Wolff admits that Mercedes made a ‘wrong choice’. “We made a decision based on previous races in Singapore, which are actually a procession, like in Monaco,” Wolff explained. “We hoped that the soft tyres could give him (Lewis Hamilton) an advantage at the start. That seemed to us the only overtaking opportunity. Unfortunately, that was the wrong choice.”
“There was of course a logic behind it, but we clearly should have done something different,” the Austrian concluded. “That doesn’t change the fact that the car is too slow. It was really a painful evening. Fourth and sixth is just not good, especially not when you start from P3 and P4.”
