03/10/2022
NEWS STORY
A needless mistake sees Lewis Hamilton lose out on a possible podium finish, as the seven-time world champion admits to a "pretty rubbish day".
Losing out to a questionable move by Carlos Sainz at the start, the Mercedes driver settled down, hanging on to the rear of the Spaniard's Ferrari.
The cat and mouse continued right up until the Briton made a mistake at Turn 7 on Lap 33, locking-up and hitting the wall, thereby damaging his front wing, just before the majority of the field began to follow George Russell's example and pit for slicks, and shortly after complaining that Sainz had brake tested him.
Rejoining the race in ninth, Hamilton found himself behind Sebastian Vettel, and as the two multi-world champions fought, Hamilton made another mistake on the final lap which allowed Max Verstappen through to claim eighth - the Dutchman subsequently passing the German also.
I don't really have much emotion at the moment," said Hamilton on a day that Toto Wolff described as being among one of the German team's worst. "It's a pretty flat, pretty poor day, a pretty rubbish day to be honest. But I feel okay, I'm just looking forward to tomorrow.
"I knew it was all over from then," he said of his first mistake. "But these things happen. I mean, I'm not going to punish myself for a mistake. It was very tricky conditions I would say for everyone, and I think our car, whatever the problems that we have with this car, it's magnified in the rain when it's wet. It's a very, very hard car to drive in the rain."
Asked if without his first mistake he thought a podium was on the cards, the seven-time champ said: "We would have potentially undercut him, maybe. But it was a battle of not the undercut but who got on the slicks first, and it would have been slice and dice.
"So, I was hoping for that and that was what I was working towards, but that went all out the fricking window when I locked up.
"I think I could do similar times to the guys ahead, but because I was stuck behind him, I couldn't. I think if I was third I would have would have kept with the guys up ahead. So, my apologies to the team but we live and we learn, and I'll recover."
Asked about a radio call to his team early in the race when he questioned the choice of tyres, he explained: "I did laps to the grid on the scrubbed Inters, and put the new Inters on, and it was terrible. It took several laps for temperatures to come up.
"We can't fire our tyres off as quick as the others for some reason. Both on wets and on slicks. So we don't really understand why. But then maybe there's something going on there in terms of temperatures, because then on the long run in the dry we've got good longevity."
Check out our Sunday gallery from Singapore here.