Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton reacted to the squeeze from Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel and then the hit from Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen in F1 Mexico GP.
It was not the clear start for Hamilton in F1 Mexico GP with the Mercedes first was squeezed by Ferrari’s Vettel in the run-up to Turn 1, which pushed him into Red Bull’s Verstappen, as the two went off on the grass before re-joining.
Despite the clashes, Hamilton managed to win the grand prix from Vettel and Valtteri Bottas after Mercedes put him on a strategy which worked to perfection. Post-race, the FOM cameras panned to the floor damage Hamilton had.
He also spoke about it in the media interaction, while opened up on the Vettel squeeze. The German said there was no intention there but the British racer continued to mess with him with a smile on his face – even though he did feel slightly undone.
“We come to Mexico, we always struggle here with our tyres, last year we lost by like 60 seconds or something,” said Hamilton. “I think we finished like fourth but we were a long way away from these guys and on Friday their pace, particularly the Red Bulls, their pace was quite stronger than ours.
“Seb went like eight or nine laps further than I could make the tyres go. But we just kept our heads down and tried to work on trying to get the most out of our car and it wasn’t great through qualifying but the race pace, once we got through all the commotion at the beginning, Seb tried his best to push me on the grass.
“I actually got a really good start, so I was pulling up to Charles and Seb is coming across, coming across, coming across and I’m thinking ‘I’m on the white line, I don’t have anywhere further to go’. And he just keeps coming. So I had to avoid crashing with him, going on the grass.
“Avoid his wheels as well, otherwise I could have caused a big collision for him.I nearly hit him then after the commotion with Max.” In response, Vettel added: “I didn’t see him. He came after the race as well and asked, but no intention to push him or anything. Obviously, as soon as I saw, I obviously got off and I tried to get in Charles’ tow.
“I checked the mirrors on the right and the mirrors on the left and that’s when I saw Lewis and then, you know, I tried to go right but before that point I didn’t see him. We see quite well in the mirrors but there is still obviously an angle that you can’t see.”
Once that was away, Hamilton noted how different he races against Verstappen. The British racer has spoken before as well that he leaves more space for the Dutch racer as the fights against him is always different to others.
“I thought at some stage I’d get torpedoed by Max after the start,” said Hamilton. “I was surrounded by a bunch of cars, I braked into Turn 1 and all of a sudden Max is alongside me. If you’ve seen races before, I always leave Max a lot of space – it’s the smartest thing you can do.
“But there wasn’t a lot of space to give him space. I think he had an oversteer moment or something and then I got a massive hit from behind. Then I nearly took him out. We were going through the corner, you were about to go into Turn 2, my back end came out and I nearly took you out and then we went straight over the grass. It was hair-raising.
“We went through the grass together, came out and there were other cars coming by. I thought I was going to get hit by other cars. But I managed to get my bearings and keep my head down. I was not expecting to have that pace and to be able to keep up with the Ferraris but it worked and even with a damaged car.”
Verstappen, meanwhile, explained his side of thing: “It is not where I wanted to finish but when you look at the circumstances, it was still a very good race. It is just a shame as we had a good start.
“Then Lewis got pushed onto the grass by one Ferrari, so he lost a bit of momentum. Then he came back around the outside in Turn 1 and in Turn 2, he went very deep to defend and I had to go off on the grass.”
Here’s how the F1 Mexico GP panned out
