The British driver was fighting a great strategic battle against Max Verstappen until the Virtual Safety Car caused by the Japanese, which stopped twice on the track. The subsequent all-or-nothing bet of Mercedes made it drop to fourth position.
It has not been an easy season for Lewis Hamilton, who continues to be the second driver in contention for Mercedes in the points and faces the possibility of remaining for the first time without victories and outside the top 5 of a championship. Even so, the seven-time champion has lived in Zandvoort one of his most intense races of the year, in which he came to have real options of winning the victory against Imperial Max Verstappen.
Mercedes’ alternative strategy on the hard tire it seemed to be working well enough to put the overall leader in a tight spot at the end of the race on his medium tyres. Nevertheless, the appearance of a rather controversial Virtual Safety Car dashed his victory hopes by allowing Verstappen to make his stop with the race semi-neutralised. That VSC starred Yuki TsunodaAlphaTauri pilot, who displayed erratic behavior throughout the situation.
“That was very, very interesting to watch”
On lap 44, Tsunoda’s car stalled on the track near an access road for more than half a minute, the Japanese commenting on the radio that he believed a wheel was incorrectly fixed. After more than half a minute, he resumed driving at low speed and made it to the pits, where the team replaced all four of his tires and appeared to adjust his safety harness. Upon his return to the track, the car continued to drive slowly until it finally stoppedmotivating the Virtual Safety Car period.
At the time, the cause suspected by the team was a problem with the differential, but the convenience of leaving Tsunoda Being a driver of the Red Bull subsidiary team and the strangeness of the situation is something that was not lost on Hamilton when he spoke afterwards with the accredited media in Zandvoort: «That was very, very interesting to see. I don’t know exactly what happened, I’ve heard that a ‘Toro Rosso’ (sic) got stuck, then went on, pitted, came out and got stuck again. It’s the strangest thing I’ve ever heard», commented the British.
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Hamilton regrets his radio criticism of the team
After all that the Safety Car caused by Valtteri Bottas He gave them one last chance to restart the race ahead of Verstappen by not changing their medium tyres, but the difference in compound between the two drivers proved too much to resist the onslaught. A frustrated Hamilton finally fell to fourth position after being overtaken by George Russell and Charles Leclerc, both also on soft tyres.
During those moments, Hamilton harshly criticized his team on the radio for the decision to leave him on the track with medium tires: «I can’t believe you guys messed with me like that, I can’t tell you how pissed off I am». However, in the post-race conversation and before the press he was repentant: «I apologize to the team. The emotions are so many, I can’t even explain it… In the heat of the moment you say things you don’t mean. That is not positive, we have had great stops and the car has been fantastic.
The peak moment of the final highlight, hand in hand as in the last appointment of 2021
“I thought we could beat them on those hard tyres”
Until the interruptions, Mercedes had planned the race intelligently strategically, and Hamilton’s good times with the hard tirefaster than Verstappen with the midfielder as the stints progressed, invited us to think of an end in style that did not come to pass from the moment of the start: «At the moment, it has been hard. I would have liked to snap my fingers and have been able to do something to stop it. But so far it had been a great race.”
“The car was running great, and I thought with those hard tires we could beat them with the one-stop strategy. But then the Safety Car thing happened and all that (…). Finishing fourth after all that isn’t great, but I’m hoping we can get that win at some point», concluded Hamilton, whose team is already just 30 points behind Ferrari in what promises to be a tough fight for second position in the constructors if the Scuderia does not react.
Photos: Mercedes-AMG F1