“They had the soft tyre ready and when the call came they couldn’t get the tyres to the vehicle, which probably cost 10 seconds”.
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“I’m not sure where to go from here, what to do”, he said.
“It was clear that not reversing the situation between Nico and Lewis would definitely lose us the race”, said Mercedes motorsport head Toto Wolff.
Red Bull team boss Christian Horner has issued an apology to driver Daniel Ricciardo after the team’s pit blunder cost him victory at the Monaco Grand Prix.
Mexican driver Sergio Perez of Force India was third ahead of Sebastian Vettel’s Ferrari.
The drama-fuelled race started under a safety auto following a deluge of rain at the principality, and while the entire field pitted for intermediate tyres, Hamilton took what would be the race-winning decision to stay out on the extreme wet option.
He is under contract with the team until 2017 but could pounce on the sour relationship between Mercedes pair Hamilton and Nico Rosberg if the latter departs. “It hurts. I don’t have anything else to say to be honest”.
After securing victory in the Monaco Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton celebrates with pop star Justin Bieber, even sharing his champagne with him.
An angry Ricciardo said afterwards: “It’s the second week in a row that I’ve been screwed”.
Hamilton snuck in front of Ricciardo as a result and then hung on for victory at the famous track, prompting Ricciardo to blast his team after the race.
“It was pretty simple, I was very far off the pace and Lewis still had a chance to win the race, quite clearly, as he did”, he said. Find us on Facebook too!
Still, it could not have been easy for the German driver, who needed a bounce-back outing just as much as Hamilton did after that debacle in the last race.
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Horner explained what happened, saying: “Based on how we are set up here in Monaco, the pit wall is upstairs and the garage is downstairs”. Rosberg is now negotiating an extension of his Mercedes contract beyond the end of this year – with the sticking point rumoured to be whether the deal is just a for one year or several years – but he said it had not played on his mind when he moved aside. It didn’t feel like a stroke of luck or anything like that, I really worked every inch of the track that I could use and ounce of grip that I had.
