PASS MASTER: HAMILTON TURNS ON THE STYLE
It’s tough going but Hamilton finds a way to pass his rivals
LEWIS HAMILTON passed title rival Max Verstappen and his Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas to win the Portuguese Grand Prix.
Mercedes were pushed to their limits by the Red Bull of Verstappen throughout, the Dutchman sweeping past Hamilton on the restart thanks to a brief Safety Car period – the seven-time champion slipping back to third.
But those places were short-lived after a mistake from Verstappen gave Hamilton an opportunity to get back to second and reel in team-mate Bottas for the victory, the Finn struggling with a sensor issue late on.
“I’m telling you, that was such a tough race,” said reigning champ Hamilton.
“Physically and mentally just keeping everything together – it was very windy out there so it was very easy to put a foot in it.
Just didn’t quite get as good of start as Valtteri and lost out on the [Safety Car] restart which wasn’t good.
“I really had to try and position myself the best I could, I can’t remember – I think Max made a mistake at some point in the lap, which was perfect and I knew that was going to be the lap that I was going to be as close as I could to him in the last sector. And then with Valtteri I had to make the move early on before the tyres were destroyed and I managed to just get him at turn on, right on my limit.” He admitted: “The next few days are about recovery. A lot of debriefs, obviously a lot to download from today – there’s improvements that we can make. Today wasn’t all perfect, so we look at those areas and try and turn over the stones.” Verstappen, who had been struggling for pace all weekend, was looking to take the lead in the championship for the first time in his career.
He said: “It was pretty decent, I had a good restart and then of course I tried to put the pressure on Valtteri, but in the end I think we just lacked a little bit of pace overall. “So Lewis got by again and then after the pit stop the warm-up is super hard on these tyres. Still, second place is good enough.We resettled for that because you could clearly see that around here we were lacking a bit of pace compared to them [Mercedes]. “It was a bit of an odd weekend, but we’ will see what we can do next in Barcelona.”