Lewis Hamilton’s championship battle with Nico Rosberg will go to the wire, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has predicted, despite the British driver taking charge of the title race for the first time this season following his win in Hungary.
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By the time Rosberg arrived though, Alonso had recovered and the yellow flags were retracted, allowing the German to continue on his way to set a faster lap time than Hamilton after the three-time world champion aborted his final lap. Double yellows, if you look it up in the rulebook, means be prepared to stop.
“The fact he didn’t get penalised means we have to be careful because the message we send to the drivers here, and also in the lower categories, is that it’s now possible for you to lose only one-tenth of a second in the double waved yellow flag section, which is one of the most unsafe scenarios”, he told a post-race news conference.
“It’s about avoiding mistakes, DNFs is what can cost you the championship and I think we’re going to see that swing towards the end of the season”.
“Since then we have pulled together and I really would love to come out of the next race with another result like this so when I do go to Spa or Monza, whichever one it is where I take the penalty and I start from pit lane or last place, that is the minimum damage, it doesn’t mean I am 25 points behind”.
“And so in that segment, I was slower, where there was the yellow flag but of course in the big sector, yeah, I’m quicker because the track is getting quicker and I’m pushing in all the other corners”.
Hamilton was asked post-race whether the delay was because stewards had not planned to investigate before his interjection, to which he replied: “I don’t believe that I influenced the stewards’ inquiry”.
“Can I respond?” he said.
He said: “You will see a couple of races go towards one and then towards the other”.
“What you have to do with a double yellow is significantly reduce your speed and make sure you go safe. So, arguably, if you go two kph or four kph slower, or you brake a little earlier, and you drop one and a half tenths, I don’t think you are preparing to stop”.
“I lifted off 30 metres before my braking point, I was just rolling there, 20 km/h slower until I got to the apex. So it was a pretty clear case for the stewards and that’s why I didn’t get any penalty”.
Hamilton, the defending champion, is now six points clear of his Mercedes team-mate Rosberg after winning five of the last six grands prix.
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“(It’s) been great to be able to come back with fewer engines, with the struggle that we had at the beginning of the year, so I’m very, very proud of that but conscious that there’s still a long way to go”.
