Lewis Hamilton 'pissed off' during German GP

Lewis Hamilton

Hamilton 'pissed off' during German GP

Mistake, then a botched pitstop.

Martin Macdonald

Monday 29 July 2019 15:04

Lewis Hamilton says he wasn’t concentrating on the amount of time it took the Mercedes engineers to fit his new front wing during the German Grand Prix, as he was preoccupied with being “pissed off” at himself for making the mistake which caused the damage.

It was a tumultuous weekend for the Brit as he fought off an illness bug to take part in the race on Sunday. He led at Hockenheim for a length period, only to crash into the barriers at the last turn on the lap, causing his front wing to break.

In his panicked attempts to get into the pit to get it fixed, he entered the pitlane the wrong side of the bollard, earning himself a five-second time penalty. To make matters worse, Mercedes were not prepared for his quick arrival, and took around a minute to attach a new front wing.

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"Honestly I don't remember," he responded when asked what was running through his mind as his engineers scrambled to fix the car.

"I was probably pissed off that I made a mistake in the previous corner and angry at myself probably.

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"Ultimately it was a combination of things that went wrong. It's massively disappointing and upsetting for all of us to be leading a grand prix, I was eight seconds in front at one stage and I had it all under control.”

The five-time world champion went on to compare his race to the Snakes and Ladders boardgame, as just when he thought things were improving, he would hit another problem and move backwards.

"Things are going to be thrown at you all the time in conditions like this, but I think one step was like one domino after another, like Snakes and Ladders almost, and I kept hitting the snakes,” he continued.

"But we win and we lose together, so it just shows you how easy it is to get a weekend wrong and the processes wrong. But we stay united, we pull together."