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Laurence Edmondson
Multiple Authors
Lewis Hamilton described his decision to ignore a Ferrari pit call as a “painful lesson” after it dropped him from third place to sixth in the final 12 laps of Sunday’s Singapore Grand Prix.
Hamilton’s race unraveled when he ignored a call from the Ferrari pit wall to follow teammate Charles Leclerc into the pits under a virtual safety car period in the second half of the race.
The decision left him committed to a monster 44-lap stint on a single set of soft tires, which allowed three rivals on fresher tires to overtake him in the closing stages of the race.
Speaking on team radio after the checkered flag, Hamilton apologized to his team for ignoring its pit call, which would have provided a time-efficient pit stop under the VSC.
“Sorry, boys,” Hamilton said. “I let you down today with that strategy.
“My call, and I lost us valuable points. I’ll try and make up for it in the next one. Great job with the pit stop, though.”
Hamilton was given permission to skip his postrace media sessions after he felt unwell following Sunday’s 62-lap race.
The Singapore Grand Prix is among the most physically grueling races on the calendar, taking place in intense heat and humidity around the 3-mile street circuit just north of the equator.
Ferrari issued a statement from Hamilton after the race in which he apologized again to his team.
“Today wasn’t the result we were looking for and it was on me,” Hamilton said. “At a track that’s difficult to overtake, you need to try something different and I chose to start on a new medium tyre, to go long and try to make a one-stop work. Unfortunately the medium didn’t perform as well as the soft.
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“I had a good second stint and the pace was back, but I couldn’t make the progress I needed. Under the VSC, the team called me in but I missed the entry. After that, I decided to stay out and try to hold track position to the end but in the closing laps, I was struggling massively with tyre degradation and lost three places, finishing P6, which doesn’t reflect the pace we had in the car today.
“A painful lesson today, but I take full responsibility for the decisions I made. Not every call will work out, and I can accept getting it wrong but I’m sorry for the team for the points we lost today. They put so much into every weekend, and I wanted to deliver more for them. I’ll continue to put the work in and come back fighting at the next race.”
After the race, Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur confirmed that Hamilton had overridden his engineer’s call to pit behind Leclerc, who went on to finish in second place.
“We called him in, we called them both to pit [under the VSC], and it would have been P2 and P3 because we were P2 and P3 on track and he missed the pit entry,” Vasseur said. “Honestly, it’s a bit of a shame because he’s losing a podium.”
