Zandvoort crash ‘painful’ after progress – Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton admits crashing out of the Dutch Grand Prix was a painful way to end what had been a weekend of progress for him and Ferrari.

A tough race in Hungary saw Hamilton particularly downbeat heading into the summer break, but he was on the pace with Charles Leclerc in Zandvoort, qualifying just 0.05s behind his teammate. When running behind George Russell early in the race, Hamilton suggested an undercut after Leclerc pitted, but slid wide at Turn 3 and hit the barrier, retiring for the first time in his Ferrari career.

“No, I didn’t [necessarily] want the undercut at that time,” Hamilton said. “I was just saying that we’d have to probably try and undercut them at some point. I wanted to go long, so my tires were still feeling good. I just… Yeah, took me by complete surprise what happened; I lost the rear up the bank, and that was it.

“Apart from that, it’s been a really solid weekend. I feel like I made progress, just overall, and my approach and everything. To come away with nothing is definitely painful.”

While Hamilton says he is disappointed to not score points for Ferrari this weekend, he says the crash won’t knock his confidence as he feels it’s a rare mistake from his point of view.

“I feel OK,” he said. “I’m sad for the team, because I really wanted to get those points for the team today, and I honestly felt like I had the pace in the cars ahead of me. I was hoping to see real progress in the race.

“Feel fine mentally. I’ve felt lots of positives, I felt I was making progress, I was catching the car ahead. It’s tough to have a result like that for sure, but I’ve been racing for so long. I’ve had God knows how many races. You can probably count on one hand that sort of incident.”

Teammate Leclerc also had a tough afternoon, as he was taken out later in the race by Mercedes rookie Kimi Antonelli, as the pair battled over what was set to be fifth place following pit stops.

“It’s a mistake from Kimi,” Leclerc said. “I think you’ve got to be very aggressive on a track like this to overtake, which I think he tried to be aggressive. Maybe it was a bit too much. He went on to touch my rear left, and that was the end of my race. It’s disappointing…

“Wouldn’t describe it a rookie mistake. I think it’s just a mistake which can happen the first year or the fifth year. Again, as I said, on a track like this, you can need to be aggressive, but that was too much.”