Hamilton sees funny side of Ferrari gamble: ‘I’m not going to the casino with the guys’
Photo: Race Pictures
Tobia is a Formula 1 journalist at GPblog with experience at international circuits. Since 2022, he has covered Grands Prix across Europe, delivering reliable coverage and insights from the paddock.
Lewis Hamilton has opened up on the discussions that led Ferrari to gamble on soft tyres at the start of the Bahrain Grand Prix, despite the Sepang circuit still being visibly wet following the lengthy delay before the race got under way.
Speaking in the post-race press conference, Hamilton explained that Ferrari spent the lengthy delay debating which tyres to use for the start. The Briton remained concerned about the amount of water on the circuit, having noticed significant spray and even checked the surface himself in the pit lane before telling the team that conditions were still wet.
Ferrari, however, believed the long delay would allow the track to dry quickly and that the crossover point towards slick tyres could already have been reached.
The team ultimately committed to the soft compound, but Hamilton immediately feared they had made the wrong choice when he saw the other frontrunners preparing to run on intermediates. Those concerns were confirmed once the cars left the pit lane and he saw the amount of spray coming from Verstappen’s car, leaving him aware that his race was already in serious trouble.
Photo: Race Pictures
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Despite quickly losing positions, Hamilton decided against immediately abandoning the strategy and returning to the pits. With a significant amount of time already lost, he felt another stop would only increase the deficit and therefore chose to remain on the softs and wait for conditions to improve, hoping the circuit would eventually dry enough for Ferrari’s gamble to begin paying off.
“There was such a long wait, and we were debating on what tyre to go onto. And I said, ‘Look, there was a lot of spray on the laps of the grid.’ And I went into the pit lane, looked at the ground, I was like, ‘It’s still wet.’ I went to the pit wall, and I was like, ‘It’s still wet.’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah, but it’s because it’s been so long, it’s definitely going to dry up real quick. And maybe we’re already in the crossover.’
“So, anyways, as a team, we ended up taking that soft. And at the end of the pit lane, and these two took off their blankets and their uninters, I had my heart just sank because I knew straight away that we were in trouble. And as we pulled out, all the spray came out the back of Max’s car, and I was like, ‘Okay, I’m done. My race is really in trouble.’
“Then we just had to stick with it, like we made the decision and live with it. And I think then through that, as everyone’s overtaking me, they (the pit wall) were like, ‘Should we stop?’ I was like, ‘No, we’ve already made another 26 seconds. What’s the difference from that with one minute 40 or whatever?’ I was down. So I was like, ‘Let’s just wait it out to the track to dry.’”
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Following an off-mic joke from Verstappen, Hamilton joked: “I'm not going to go to the casino with the guys.”
Returning to a more serious note, he concluded: “We'll definitely have an open dialogue. We've definitely got areas that we need to improve, and we know that, and we're not in any denial of that. So I think we'll have a constructive chat. We'll regroup. We'll take the positives from this weekend, which the car was really good. And we'll come back next week fighting.”
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