“I was very much in no-man’s land”– Lewis Hamilton avoids taking credit in the crucial Mercedes pitstop that helped him claim his 100th win.
Lewis Hamilton made a glorious 100 wins record in Formula 1, and indeed, huge credit goes to the pitstop his team made to change the tyres into intermediaries that helped him to recover lost time against Lando Norris.
However, Hamilton thinks that the credit to that pitstop decision shouldn’t go to him, as he had little idea whether they were required or not and instead focused on the win.
“Yeah, firstly I can’t take credit for that amazing decision, that was the team’s,” he said in the post-race press conference. For me, I was very much in no-man’s land for a long time in terms of; I didn’t know where I was in the race.”
“I had no idea how far Lando was ahead. I was just trying to set the best time every lap. Once I got past one of the McLarens in my second stint, getting past people, chasing down Lando.”
“They were incredibly quick all of a sudden. He was doing a really great job. Just in those last moments, it was slippery in 5 and a little bit in 7 but then everywhere else grip was pretty good.”
OK! stay out
When Norris started to add seconds against Hamilton, the seven-time world champion wanted to stay ahead, which he even confessed in the post-race interview. The more rain eventually made him realize that he should go with the team call.
“Lando went off, I think in 5 on one lap, and I was like ‘OK, OK, stay out, it’s most likely going to happen again, I’ll try to catch him out’. Then they called me in, and I was like: ‘Yeah, but he’s right there!’ I only had three laps to catch up 24 seconds, so it was like ‘no way’.”
“So I wasn’t convinced the first lap. The next lap it rained more and I was definitely more convinced then, so I came in.”
