Lewis Hamilton Rues ‘Worst Weekend Ever’

Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton has said that the Austrian Grand Prix was the ‘worst weekend I can remember’. The 4-time World Champion was forced to retire from the race with a mechanical problem.

Hamilton had a good start, passing team-mate Valtteri Bottas into Turn 1. All this was despite being split by a fast-starting Kimi Raikkonen who then ran wide.

The race took a turn for the worse for Mercedes when Bottas retired with a hydraulics failure on lap 15. This brought out the virtual safety car and most of the leaders, with the exception of Hamilton, pitted.

As it turned out, the decision was a strategy error by the team. Mercedes chief strategist James Vowles even came on the radio too apologise to Hamilton for the mistake. He said, “Lewis I threw away the win today, but you’ve got the capability to overtake these guys.”

Lewis Hamilton re-emerged in fourth and it wasn’t long before Sebastian Vettel overtook him. The dark cloud over the Mercedes garage grew bigger as blistering tyres took a toll and Lewis had to make a second pitstop.

The day ended early for Hamilton with his Mercedes also pulling over just 10 laps later to retire.

“We can’t throw away points,” a gutted Hamilton said.

“We’ve got to find a bulletproof method to move forward with our strategy because if our car was still going it was an easy win for us. We were comfortably ahead.

“Everyone in the team is feeling the pain today. We’ve had such great reliability for so many years. As painful as it is and we are professionals, we really have to take the rough with the smooth.

“This is definitely the worst weekend I can remember us having for a long time. But I have every confidence in my team that we’ll be able to bounce back.”

As a result of the retirement, Hamilton has relinquished his championship lead to Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel. He trails the German by a point heading to his home race at Silverstone next weekend. Mercedes also surrendered the lead in the constructors’ championship to Ferrari.