(Motorsport-Total.com) – That Lewis Hamilton would celebrate his 97th Grand Prix victory in Portimao, it didn’t look like that at the start of the race. Because at the restart after the safety car, the Mercedes driver was taken by surprise by Max Verstappen and lost his second place to the Dutchman in Turn 1. A look at the wrong moment should be to blame, according to Hamilton.
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Max Verstappen passed Lewis Hamilton after the safety car
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When the safety car returned to the pits, Hamilton was in second place behind his team-mate Valtteri Bottas. Due to the headwind on the home straight, he had waited until almost the last moment to pick up the pace again as the leader.
“Of course I was focused on Valtteri and only looked in my rear-view mirror for a split second to see where Max was. And at that very moment Valtteri drove off,” said Hamilton, describing the decisive scene. “That’s why I lost ground to Valtteri. That wasn’t great.”
But that wasn’t all: Verstappen was able to use the moment to put himself in a good position. “I was in Valtteri’s slipstream and Max was about to leave,” says Hamilton. So he decided to do the blocking maneuver himself and inadvertently gave Verstappen the slipstream of his teammate.
The Red Bull then passed in Turn 1. “And I was like, ‘I idiot!'”
For the rest of the race, however, Hamilton had fun again. The Briton was able to overtake his opponents in front of him and win the race. “The track made it possible for us to fight closely in the first stint. I think that’s what the fans want. At least that’s what I want,” he says.
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“The track was great because you could drive different lines in some corners – a bit like Austin. That was really great.”
Once again he saw a “great fight” between Red Bull and Mercedes – and proof that Red Bull would be capable of the fastest race lap in the end. According to Hamilton, that promises a lot. He announced: “We will push each other until the last race. In the end we will have enough of each other – or enough of racing because there are so many races.”
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