Lewis Hamilton - Final Bahrain GP laps were "horrifying"

Hamilton na zijn winst van de Grand Prix van Bahrein — Photo: © LAT Images

Mercedes

Hamilton - Final Bahrain GP laps were "horrifying"

Hamilton won F1 season-opener for first time since 2015

Ian Parkes & Sam Hall

Sunday 28 March 2021 23:24 Updated: 23:36

Lewis Hamilton has described the final laps of his Bahrain Grand Prix victory as "horrifying" after the Mercedes driver came under attack from Max Verstappen.

After reeling in Hamilton on hard tyres that were 11 laps fresher than his Mercedes rival, Verstappen passed the seven-time champion for the lead on lap 53 of 56.

The Red Bull driver, however, was ruled to have exceeded track limits and forced to hand the place back, and despite hounding the Mercedes over the closing stages, he had to settle for second just 0.746secs adrift at the chequered flag.

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When asked to describe the final laps Hamilton, who thought he would be unable to fend off the Dutchman, replied: "Ah, it was horrifying! It wasn’t great.

"I was struggling obviously at the end with the rear end of my car, the rear tyres had gone off.

"They were maybe eight laps older or something like that [11] to Max’s tyres, so I knew that he was going to catch me with 10 laps to go.

"I knew that it was going to be pretty much impossible to hold him behind, which it was, up until the turn four incident. Then after that, I couldn’t believe that I was just keeping him behind.

"I managed to keep him in my wake, well, he was right behind me so then [he was] stuck in my wake and that meant it was difficult for him to get close and he ended up wide in some places which gave me a little bit of an edge."

As to whether he enjoyed the final laps or they were too intense, naturally Hamilton drew pleasure from the fact Mercedes went into the weekend as underdogs and came away with the win.

"No, I loved every minute of it," enthused Hamilton. "Every minute of the weekend I’ve loved.

"Knowing for us as a team that we were behind in performance… these guys have done a better job so far and so for us to come away with this result, given that we weren’t the fastest this weekend, is a real result.