“In the heat of the moment”– Lewis Hamilton clarifies his criticism to Mercedes in Monaco

“In the heat of the moment”– Lewis Hamilton had some words to speak against his team after a woeful performance in Monaco.

Mercedes had one of the worst weekends in Monaco, as they lost Valtteri Bottas’ contention to DNF and Lewis Hamilton finished P7, ending Mercedes monopoly at the top of the table.

This was not something expected from Mercedes, even though there were signs that they might struggle while analysing the whole weekend, yet this performance was not justified to Hamilton.

After the race, he had some harsh word against his team; the Brit conspicuously expressed his disappointment and admitted that they have underperformed.

“We lost a lot of points today for a really, really poor performance from the team,” Hamilton said after the weekend. “I’m definitely a little bit surprised by it, but these things are sent to try us.”

“Three places it cost us [the strategy]. I don’t really have a reaction to it. I think we do all our talking in the background and we’ll work together and try and come out of this stronger.”

“We underperformed as a team all weekend from the get-go so we’ll just put our focus onto the next race.”

“In the heat of the moment.”

Two weeks after the race in Monaco, Hamilton talked about his post-race words during the press conference in Azerbaijan and mentioned that those words were spoken in the heat of the moment.

“In the heat of the moment, you don’t always say the best things,” he admitted. “I think constructive criticism is always a good thing, better said behind closed doors and that’s what we’ve been doing.”

“There was no one single person to blame,” he added. “I was very much part of the decision-making process, and after going back and having a look, and analysing things, there are things that I could have said that would have set a domino effect on.”

“So we know that we could have done better and one race doesn’t define us,” he insisted.

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

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