WE’RE SORRY LEW
Mercedes apologise after big errors hand Verstappen win
MERCEDES issued a grovelling apology to Lewis Hamilton, saying “this one’s on us”, after two strategy mistakes allowed title rival Max Verstappen to win the French Grand Prix.
Red Bull’s Verstappen passed Hamilton on the penultimate lap to take a pulsating contest at Circuit Paul Ricard and extend his championship lead to 12 points.
Hamilton assumed control after pole-sitter Verstappen ran off the track at the opening corner.
But the Dutchman was back in the lead on lap 20 when he stopped before Hamilton, using his fresher tyres to wipe out a 3.2-second deficit. Verstappen and Hamilton then set a relentless pace, making a second change of tyres inevitable.
Frustrated to have fallen behind his rival, Hamilton urged the Mercedes pit wall to make sure he performed the undercut next time around.
But Red Bull blinked first. Verstappen came in for a second time and Mercedes had no choice but to leave Hamilton on track in the hope he could perform a miracle by winning on 34-lap-old rubber. Hamilton drew on his brilliance to tee up a thrilling finale, but could not prevent Verstappen coming from 18 seconds back with 20 laps to run to sail by at the chicane with fewer than five miles remaining.
“Lewis, this one is on us,” Mercedes chief strategist James Vowles told Hamilton after the chequered flag dropped. “Thank you for doing everything you could to recover that race. You drove incredibly well.”
Both Hamilton, below, and teammate Valtteri Bottas said they told their team it might not be a onestop race. Indeed, Bottas, who lost third to Verstappen’s Red Bull team-mate Sergio Perez in the closing stages, fumed over the radio: “Why the f*** did no one listen to me when
I said it was going to be a two-stop race. F ****** hell.” Hamilton tried to put a brave face on the defeat.
“It is not gut-wrenching,” he said. “But I’m sure if we looked at it with hindsight, we could have stopped
earlier, gone on to a two-stop strategy and it probably could have won the race. “A two-stopper was not on the cards at all for us, so we will do some analysis and try to figure out why. The tyre degradation was much bigger than anybody on my team thought.” Verstappen’s triumph moved him on to three wins apiece with Hamilton. He said: “The whole race we were fighting each other so it is going to be like this for the rest of the season.”
Lando Norris continued his fine campaign by driving to fifth from eighth on the grid, with Daniel Ricciardo sixth in the other McLaren.