Hamilton won’t “punish himself” for F1 Singapore GP mistake

Hamilton slid straight on and nosed into the barrier while chasing Carlos Sainz shortly after half distance.

He was able to get going again, but his front wing was damaged, and he was forced to come in and change it.

He was able to combine the stop with a switch to slicks, but the whole episode cost him a lot of time, and dropped him from fourth to ninth place. He eventually finished the race in the same position.

"I knew it was all over from then,” said Hamilton when asked by Autosport about the error. “But these things happen. I mean, I'm not going to punish myself for a mistake.

“I think it was very tricky conditions I would say for everyone, and I think our car, whatever the problems that we have with this car, it's magnified in the rain when it's wet. A very, very hard car to drive in the rain."

Asked if like Max Verstappen he lost control when the car bottomed out he said: "I don't really know. I will check on the data.

"I don't want to blame it on that, but the car was bottoming a lot, and obviously had the locking. So I don't know where the locking came from."

The Mercedes pit crew replace a front wing on the car of Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W13

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

Hamilton initially thought he’d got away without wing damage.

"For the first few corners it felt normal, and then eventually sparks started to show, and I think then it just failed.”

Hamilton’s race started to go awry at the start, when he lost out to Sainz at the first corner. He said on the radio that he’d been pushed wide, but insisted that he wasn’t trying to get the Spaniard penalised.

"It's fine,” he said. “Racing. The only reason I mentioned it is because I didn't want anyone to think I just drove off track, because there's a bollard to the far right, but I was actually forced wide, so that was the only reason."

The move by Sainz meant that Hamilton was stuck behind the Ferrari driver, and he was left frustrated as he lost contact with leaders Sergio Perez and Charles Leclerc.

"Yeah, that kind of difficult start, and then obviously getting stuck behind Carlos. I don't know why he was so slow. But obviously not quick enough to get past him in these conditions, and then just sitting behind him.

“But I think I could do similar times to the guys ahead, but because I was stuck behind him, I couldn't. I think if I was third I would have would have kept with the guys up ahead."

Hamilton also explained a message to the team early in the race, when he said “I told you about these tyres” and complained of a lack of grip.

"I did laps to the grid on the scrubbed [inter], and put the new [inter] on, and it was terrible. It several laps for temperatures to come up. And we can't fire our tyres off as quick as the others for some reason.

“Both on wets and on slicks. So we don't really understand why. But then maybe there's something going on there in terms of temperatures, because then on the long run in the dry we've got good longevity.”

Asked if he saw any positives from the weekend he said: "The car had its moments this weekend for sure, where it was not too bad, I think. It's a bit hit and miss with this car.

“I think there was positives for sure to take from this weekend. It's just a shame not to get any points for the team. Three points I think we got probably for the team. But we'll take it."