Rather than losing out to another poor strategic call from his team it turns out that Lewis Hamilton ignored order to pit under VSC.

In the closing stages of the Singapore Grand Prix, having been picked off by his teammate, Kimi Antonelli, Lando Norris and finally Oscar Piastri, one shuddered at the thought of the rocket the British driver was going to fire up his team's backside at having effectively been left hung out to dry following another poor strategic call.

However, on the cool-down lap, as he headed back to the pit, the seven-time world champion said: "Sorry boys, I let you down today with that strategy, my call.

"I lost us valuable points," he added, "I'll try and make up for it in the next one. Great job with the pit-stop though."

"Understood, thank you Lewis," came the reply.

While the rest of us couldn't understand why the Briton had been left out on a set of used softs that had been fitted 18 laps into the 52 lap race, it appeared that it was Hamilton who made the call.

It subsequently emerged that when the VSC was deployed after Lance Stroll stopped on track, Leclerc and Hamilton were both told to pit.

The Monegasque obliged, as did Antonelli and George Russell, but Hamilton ignored the call... much to his and his team's cost.

Telling his team that he felt unwell, Hamilton was able to avoid the media post-mortems and it was left to Ferrari to issue the Briton's post-race comments via its press release.

"Today wasn't the result we were looking for and it was on me," admitted Hamilton. "At a track that's difficult to overtake, you need to try something different and I chose to start on a new medium tyre, to go long and try to make a one-stop work. Unfortunately the medium didn't perform as well as the soft.

"I had a good second stint and the pace was back, but I couldn't make the progress I needed. Under the VSC, the team called me in but I missed the entry. After that, I decided to stay out and try to hold track position to the end but in the closing laps, I was struggling massively with tyre degradation and lost three places, finishing P6, which doesn't reflect the pace we had in the car today.

"A painful lesson today, but I take full responsibility for the decisions I made. Not every call will work out, and I can accept getting it wrong but I'm sorry for the team for the points we lost today. They put so much into every weekend, and I wanted to deliver more for them. I'll continue to put the work in and come back fighting at the next race."

"We called him in, we called them both to pit," team boss, Fred Vasseur subsequently told reporters, "it would have been P2 and P3 because we were P2 and P3 on track and he missed the pit entry.

"Honestly, it's a bit of a shame because he's losing a podium," added the Frenchman.

Check out our Sunday gallery from Singapore here.

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by Spindoctor, 3 minutes ago

"Stupid mistake from Hamilton, but kudos for publicly owning up - though I expect the truth would have come out anyway.
Ferrari, like all the other teams, has a huge group of people & probably now AIs monitoring the race - they should determine the strategy. Full stop.
Everyone watching, even the asinine commentary from Sky & probably our cats could see clearly that Hamilton, having (as we now know) ignored the initial call, should have pitted for tyres ASAP afterwards.

Most worrying is Ferrari's lack of "bite" strategically, which has cost numerous drivers points & probably championships since Brawn & Schumacher left the team. It's OK for teams to "let drivers race" a la McLaren & Mercedes, but not if that seriously compromises one driver at the other's expense & costs the team points.
They should have ordered Leclerc to let Lewis past immediately he was within range & they should have told Hamilton to do as he was told in no uncertain terms, with sanctions for both if they failed to comply.

"

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2. Posted by rambler, 38 minutes ago

"To my mind the real error was Leclerc not letting Hamilton passed after Hamilton had changed to reds. Hamilton was on the better tyres and faster, Leclerc held him up. On the fresher tyres Hamilton may have been able to eat into Verstappen's lead and forced a change in strategy at Red Bull. "

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3. Posted by kenji, 1 hour ago

"No wonder he felt ' ill 'at the prospect of facing the media after making such a mess of it all. Saved by the medicos.... "

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Hamilton apologises for costly strategic error

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