The head of the Mercedes team believes that his driver would have won if he had not had an incident with Magnussen in the first lap of the race.
After contact with the Haas driver, the seven-time world champion had to force a change of tires and fell on his back. He even asked the team at one point if it made sense to continue the race from that position, but they encouraged him to stay on the track.
After that, Hamilton showed a great pace and that enabled him to break through to the fourth place. However, due to problems, he had to slow down in the very finish, so he finished the race in fifth place.
Team boss Toto Wolff is overjoyed with Hamilton’s race and believes he has had the pace to oppose Red Bull drivers.
“We have to analyze part of the initial phase of the race. The tires worked ok, but we couldn’t keep up. However, then everything suddenly turned around. We made minor changes to the pit stop and Lewis had a strong pace on tires that were similar in age to theirs and that shows that the potential is there, ”said Wolff.
The engines in both cars had a water leak at the very end of the race, which forced them to slow down, but Wolff says that these problems should not affect the driving quality of his drivers. We noticed a potential problem developing during the race and in the end we were just looking to finish the race. We are still not sure if there is any damage to the engine, “Wolff added.
