Hamilton sees Red Bull win for the first time: "Verstappen did a fantastic job"

"I was trying to go for a one-stop at the end but there was a lot of vibration with the tyres that we had and I didn’t know if the tyre was going to last if I’m being honest", Hamilton said at the press conference after the Grand Prix at Silverstone. The risk of losing a lot of World Championship points was too big according to the six-time world champion. "Not just with the rubber but I just a rear tyre blow-out through a corner was too big a risk to take."

With twelve laps to go, Hamilton had a nine-second lead on Verstappen. Yet the 35-year old Brit thinks his team made the right choice. "I think it was a good decision by the team. I was trying to keep going but there were a lot of laps to go and Max, I think at the end, was doing 28s, 29s and I couldn’t do that on the tyre old tyres, so congratulations to him, he did a fantastic job", he reacted sporty.

Verstappen gave himself a big advantage at the start of the GP by being able to start on the hard tyres. Did Mercedes drop stitches there in Q2? "It’s all hearsay. Hindsight’s always a good thing but I really don’t know. Maybe we wouldn’t have fallen back towards Max but even on the Hard tyre we had blistering. A lot of blistering. So even with a lot of management."

Normally the teams in Formula 1 always use one-stops. Pirelli's rubber usually lasts a long time, but Hamilton hopes that that will change in time. "I think, has made the race even more exciting as we set about a two stop. Part of me doesn’t want to propose that we go with softer tyres moving forwards because maybe we’ll be in this position again, but ultimately, one-stop sucks. We should never be doing one-stops, I think in this sport. It’s never been good watching as a fan", concludes Hamilton.