Has Hamilton taken a knock? 'Is about whether he can recover mentally'

Many a curse will have flown through the living room of Formula 1 viewers in the Netherlands on Sunday when the image jumped to Max Verstappen who hit the wall just as he was whistling to his first victory in Baku. The championship points seemed in favour of Hamilton until the latter made an uncharacteristic mistake at the red flag restart. 

Costly miss

Ironically, even before the restart for the final laps in Azerbaijan, Hamilton told the team on his radio that he wasn't going to do anything crazy: it was a marathon, not a sprint. Something that also Alice Powell, racer in the W-Series and commentator for F1TV, said to the team. The-Race.com. "It's a huge mistake. I jumped up in the commentary box, I honestly couldn't believe what I had seen, especially after what he had said over the radio."

Powell doesn't immediately dare pinpoint a reason for the costly miss: "Maybe it was the thrill of taking an unexpected win, especially after Mercedes' struggles in free practice. Maybe he was a little too excited in Turn 1 and thought 'I can win here', so he just lost focus and flipped the switch. It was a real shock for me to see that mistake."

Mental problems for Lewis?

According to Powell, this could therefore be a mental problem for Hamilton: "In the future it will be important how Hamilton comes back from this. It's not Verstappen's fault, the suspected tyre failure, while Hamilton's mistake was his own. It's about how Hamilton can recover mentally, not only has he cost himself big points in the drivers championship, it's also big points loss for Mercedes with Valtteri Bottas not scoring either. Whereas Verstappen can say 'well not my fault, I was in comfortable control of that race, didn't make any mistakes, so I'm still in control of this championship'.