Lewis Hamilton Gives His “apologies to the team”

It was a disappointing Singapore Grand Prix for Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula 1 Team, with Lewis Hamilton and George Russell both making critical mistakes.

Hamilton was battling Carlos Sainz for fourth but slid straight on into the barriers, leaving him with no option but to pit to replace his broken front wing. Luckily the seven-time World Champion combined the stop with the switch to slick tyres meaning not too much time was lost but enough to push him down the order from fourth to ninth.

The seven-time champion tried to save his race but found himself battling Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen. The Brit went to overtake Vettel and found himself overtaken by Verstappen as a result.

“I think we started off with a pretty decent weekend and it was just really unfortunate at the end, no matter how hard I was trying it was just not possible to overtake.

“Today was about who gets on the slicks first and it would have been slice and dice with Carlos, which I was working towards. But that went out of the window when I had that lockup going into Turn 7. Your heart sinks a little bit, but you get back up again and try.

“My apologies to the Team, it’s a shame we didn’t manage to secure more points today. But we live, we learn and we will recover. We have lots to review from this weekend and I’m looking forward to Suzuka.“

George Russell – “We showed how fast our car can be and I’m still proud of the team because we are making good progress”

Credit: Octane Photographic Ltd

George Russell also had a highly disappointing race by his own standards and ended his streak of finishing in the top five in every race he finished.

The Brit started in the pitlane after a disappointing qualifying session that put him in eleventh place. This was seen as a good opportunity to take a power unit and the team also had worries about the reliability of his car. Further setbacks happened, including a tussle with Mick Schumacher.

He was the first driver to switch to the slick tyres and that change was way too early, he lost a lot of time because of this, meaning his race was pretty much over.

Russell was pleased with the performance of the car but was disappointed with his poor finish.

“We took a risk today going on slicks and it could have paid off with the Safety Car but then I had the incident with Mick. I don’t know what happened, we need to review it. I’m disappointed we didn’t score any points this weekend, but I’m pleased that the issues with the brakes we experienced in FP3 had been resolved and our confidence restored.

“We showed how fast our car can be and I’m still proud of the team because we are making good progress. I got a lot of confidence and optimism from today that we do have a competitive car.

“It was an enjoyable race although out of the points – I like the challenging conditions that Singapore brings, but obviously we want to finish much higher up. We have lots of work to do ahead of Suzuka but it was positive to experience the car’s potential today.“