Lewis Hamilton during the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Photo: Race Pictures

Hamilton defends ignoring Ferrari team orders: “I was zoned in”

16:12, 21 Sep

bySamson Ero

Lewis Hamilton has reflected on his outing at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. The Scuderia Ferrari driver also touched on the team order incident, which he appeared to ignore in the final part of the race.

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Lewis Hamilton at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Photo: Race Pictures

“I was quicker…”

- Lewis Hamilton

Hamilton, who finished in eighth place, admitted to being very disappointed with his outing. The former Mercedes driver also pointed to his poor qualifying run as a factor behind his disappointing race.

“A bit disappointing result at the end of the day. I did go forward. My pace was generally good. I was flat out, I was definitely much better, much happier in the car.”

“It was difficult today to close up on what cars are headed very fast. Clearly, qualifying is very important, and we missed out on that. Williams, they qualified and finished there. But there are lots of positives to take from it, and definitely. It's a lot to draw from the weekend, which I'll try and take to the next one.”

Speaking further on his overall outing, Hamilton continued:

“I was going long, and I hoped there would be some sort of safety car, and there was nothing. Unfortunately, this happened a lot this year. We were just not seeing any incidents, and everyone's in that DRS train for a passing time.”

“But also, I think our setup choice at the end, procedure with execution, in qualifying was not great, which put us in that position to be fighting for eighth and ninth is not what we would think. If we had optimised the weekend, I think we would have been slightly up, maybe fourth and fifth.”

Lewis Hamilton on ignoring team orders

Hamilton also ignored the team orders to swap places with Charles Leclerc ahead of the chequered flag. Quizzed about the decision, the seven-time world champion continued:

“I was quicker, but Charles was gracious to let me by. At the end, I got the message really late on it, and I was zoned in the car in front of me, even though there was like 0.001 chance of passing, I was still hopeful and I did lift on the straight and did actually break but we missed it by like four tenths so that was just a much tougher for myself so I was going to ask Charles at the end of the day”

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