Lewis Hamilton says he is baffled by the poor start that wrecked his Italian Grand Prix win chances and only accepted the blame initially to reassure his Mercedes Formula 1 team.
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The 36-year-old McLaren driver, who won the world championship in 2009, has competed in every grand prix season since the turn of the century and, following a career which has yielded almost 300 starts, 15 victories and 50 podiums, revealed on Saturday that he will not participate in the sport in a full-time role next year.
Rosberg led all but one lap of the race to reduce the gap in the standings to Hamilton to just two points.
The Dutchman did make his presence known to Sergio Perez as he overtook the Sahara Force India driver for seventh place at the Ascari chicane, but although the Mexican swerved sharply off track as he saw the Red Bull man coming, there was no issue with the move Verstappen made. For the first time in 7 years the Monza race was not won by a pole-sitter.
While Hamilton was forced to negotiate his way back through the pack after slipping to sixth, Rosberg was afforded a straightforward run to victory. Nobody. Because if you start to blame people this is when it starts going downhill because people will try to protect their a*** and make sure they have a conservative system in place rather that putting the best developments on the auto.
With 17 laps remaining, Rosberg led Hamilton by 11.5 with Ricciardo third, until he took his delayed second stop for more super-softs to equip him for a final high-speed scrap with Bottas.
However, after the race, the World Championship leader – who is a 1/4 favourite for the Drivers’ Championship title – said that his initial communication with the team had not been accurate. “It’s a great day for Mercedes and I’m glad to be a part of it”, he shared.
“Our performance so far this season and the result we have achieved here makes me really excited heading into Singapore where I think we can challenge for the top spots”, Ricciardo said, a sentiment backed up by Red Bull team principal Christian Horner.
Hamilton added: “Yes, the start was the decider for this race and then I had to climb back and score points”.
But starts have remained a problem through the year, with Hamilton also away in Spain and Canada before his poor getaway at Monza, and Rosberg also struggling off the line in Hungary and Germany.
“In the race he said, “Don’t worry guys, I got it wrong at the start”, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said. “If I think about 45 points going to 19 I would lose sleep over that, so I don’t think about it and just enjoy winning the races”.
But with the last contracted race taking place this weekend at Monza, Ecclestone and his local counterpart announced they’d come to an agreement. “Once you are out front here it is relatively plain and simple… all he had to do was match some of my times and he was sorted”, said Hamilton.
Alonso tried to come back at Button, but the Englishman had too much pace and pulled away.
“I was pretty close to Bottas in the middle of the race and knew I could race hard from that position”.
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“The reason the rules were changed past year was to give more responsibility to the driver and make it more variable”, Wolff said.
