Hamilton questions late pit stop as podium slips away

Lewis Hamilton feels he missed out on a podium finish in the Hungarian Grand Prix as a result of Ferrari’s late call to make a pit stop under virtual safety car that cost him track position.

A gearbox issue for Oscar Piastri led to the McLaren stopping on track and to the VSC being deployed, with Ferrari taking the opportunity to pit Hamilton and swap an old set of hard tires for softs. Hamilton dropped from second on track to fourth behind Max Verstappen and Kimi Antonelli as a result, and couldn’t find a way past the Mercedes before a time penalty for speeding during the final pit stop demoted him to fifth.

“I'm not really sure why we stopped at the end,” Hamilton said. “I got the call right before the pit lane entry, so I didn't have time to debate it. I would never have stopped if it meant that I was given up track position. So I thought that that would not be the case.

“I think we probably would have lost out to Max, probably – he was on fresher tires – in that last stint. I may have been able to hold on to P2. He was catching me. But most likely it would have been P3 and it would have been much better. But instead, I lost a bunch of points.”

Hamilton found himself stuck behind Verstappen early in the race and admits he was caught out by an attack from the Dutchman soon after clearing him through strategy, but believes his grid penalty for impeding during qualifying was the main reason Ferrari couldn’t capitalize on its race pace.

“I had a relatively decent start, [and] gained position. And then I had really good pace in that first half of the first stint of the race. Yu just can’t overtake here, unfortunately.

“Then undercut Max, which is a positive. Then when we were passing one of the backmarkers, I didn't see Max coming, unfortunately. Max came past me and it kind of went downhill from there.

“It was pretty bad. Pretty frustrating. But it is what it is and there's lots of positives to take from this first half of the season.

“I think we executed pretty decently yesterday. I definitely think I had the pace probably to compete at least for the top two, top three. I think if we hadn't had the penalty yesterday, we probably would have been in a much better position at the end. But it's not meant to be.”