Hamilton: I lost a lot of points today&;
Thanks to the retirement of some of his rivals, Lewis Hamilton was able to take a painful 7th place in Monaco thanks to the pitstop system. Enough to limit the damage, but no more.
This is a race the British triple world champion had not accustomed us to see. Yet this 2017 Monaco Grand Prix truly stands as a debacle for driver no. 44, but also for the Mercedes team as a whole, which could do no better than 4th place at the finish with Valtteri Bottas, yielding the 3rd podium spot to Red Bull driver Daniel Ricciardo.
Despite a simple 7th place for Hamilton’s Silver Arrow, the Briton finds positives from his race in the Principality: « I think I managed it correctly and professionally and I couldn’t have gone faster before the pit stops; I was already at the limits of my brakes and close to the achievable times. »
Lewis Hamilton sees tires as part of the problem during his race: The super soft tires worked in a much better window than the ultra softs, notes the runner-up to Vettel in the world championship. But the car did not behave spectacularly, it was a real struggle, concludes Hamilton.
Regarding his last laps, the Mercedes driver did not want to “tempt fate” against the Toro Rosso of his predecessor on track, Carlos Sainz Jr., for fear of making a kamikaze maneuver on the winding Monaco circuit: I had some opponents in my sights at the end, but risking losing points by passing [Carlos Sainz] would have been something foolish.
The Englishman chose to put into perspective in the Monaco paddock this dreadful result for him in the championship in his battle against the Ferrari drivers and particularly against the day’s winner, Sebastian Vettel: « Of course, in the end, I lost a lot of points, but looking at this day as a whole, I think by starting from 13th on the grid, I could have been involved in an accident, I could have damaged my car, broken my engine, and I would have left with no points ».
From our special correspondent in Monaco
