02/08/2021
NEWS STORY
Lewis Hamilton has shed light on what is surely one of the strangest scenes ever witnessed in F1...
Heading out to the grid for the restart of the race, everyone was on intermediate tyres.
"It's definitely going to be dry and quick," reported Hamilton during the course of the formation lap.
Moments later, George Russell added: "At this rate everybody is going to box."
However, with no word from his team, Hamilton continued on to the grid, while behind Esteban Ocon led the rest of the field into the pits to change tyres and start from the pitlane, leaving 'Lewis no mates' alone on the grid anticipating the start.
As he raced off into the distance on inters, with the field in hot pursuit, all sporting fresh mediums, Hamilton sighed: "Yeh, it's dry..."
"Box, box, box, box," came the reply.
Pitting at the end of the lap Hamilton rejoined the race in last position, and so began a long, hard slog back to his more familiar place in the order of things.
"We all started on those inters, and through the formation lap I was just giving the team information," explained Hamilton at race end. "I mean, it was dry through all the corners and I kept telling them 'it's dry, dry, dry, dry' but they said just to stay out.
"I don't really understand," he admitted, "but I'm sure it's definitely a mistake from us... but we win and lose as a team and we bear the burden of the mistake together and we just keep fighting, so the team did an amazing job with the strategy, with pitstops, and I just had to make it work out there.
"It was flat chat the entire race and very, very hard with tyre temperatures and all that but nevertheless, but I enjoyed it."
"To be honest, I think we did absolutely the right thing," insisted Toto Wolff. "There's no one in the team that would have done otherwise.
"As a leading car it's always difficult to take the decision," he continued, "and if you're the only one pitting then you come out last and there is the difficulty of getting out of the pit stand because everybody's pitting, and obviously, it played against us.
"These things can happen," he added. "I stand absolutely behind the decision to stay out , and that's why I'm fine. I think we could have gambled as a leading car and come in also with a disastrous outcome and if that happened people would have also said that we had made a mistake. That was the right decision."
Check out our Sunday gallery from the Hungaroring, here.