Hamilton: Safety Car “kicked me in the teeth” | Recovery “positive for me”

Hamilton was forced into an early pit stop after struggling with tyre degradation in the first portion of the race.

Shortly after making his pit stop, the Safety Car was deployed because of Nyck de Vries’ crash at Turn 6.

This meant a number of Hamilton’s rivals could pit under the Safety Car, reducing the amount of time they would lose because drivers who had already stopped are forced to drive to a time delta.

It meant Hamilton was 10th, rather than fifth, losing out to Fernando Alonso, George Russell, Lance Stroll, Esteban Ocon and Nico Hulkenberg - the latter duo hadn’t stopped under the Safety Car.

Hamilton showed great aggression to overtake Ocon and Hulkenberg immediately, before flying past Russell into Turn 1.

The seven-time world champion ultimately finished sixth having been unable to overtake Carlos Sainz in the closing laps.

“It started off pretty decent, then I had quite a bit of deg on my medium tyre, then I had to pit, then the Safety Car really kicked me in the teeth,” Hamilton said. “I lost five places and that was difficult to swallow for a second.

“I knew there was nothing I could do about it, so all I could do was just focus on what I could control. I got my head down, was just racing hard from the restart, and had a great battle with a bunch of cars, which was really positive for me to feel in the car.

“I was chasing the Ferrari [Sainz] down at the end, just not quite enough to get by him. If I hadn’t had that Safety Car stuff maybe we’d have had a better battle until the end.”

It was a missed opportunity for Russell, who lost several places following the Safety Car restart.

He finished eighth with the fastest lap to his name.

“I think it was all right,” Russell added. “But following and overtaking seemed pretty challenging [here] this year for everybody, and I think after those first few laps and the restart, the Safety Car restart, it was all behind and line astern from where we were.

“[I’m] a little bit disappointed because I had a really good start, made a few positions, [made a] really good move around the Safety Car, and then I went deep into Turn 1, almost crashed into Fernando [Alonso], and lost a position to Lance, [so it was a] scrappy lap.

“Then I lost a position to Lewis and ultimately ended up P8, when potentially P5 was on the cards. So, that’s the way the game works. We need to be quicker and try and come back stronger in Miami.”