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It was a fairly simple afternoon for Lewis Hamilton after some incidents favored him. Despite starting in P2, the Brit did not enjoy the best starts. Red Bull’s Max Verstappen passed him shortly to that position.
But, shortly after teammate Valtteri Bottas pitted, Hamilton took the lead. And when he moved on to Bottas, he continued to work on his original medium tires, to make sure he built a big enough time gap.
That the virtual safety car that came out due to the Esteban Ocon incident only helped Hamilton’s cause. And later, after Max Verstappen’s tire blowout, the task only got easier for Hamilton, although his engineer wanted to play rather cautiously!
Lewis Hamilton was way ahead of Verstappen
Just as Hamilton came out of the pit lane about 1.5 seconds ahead of Bottas, his race engineer Peter “Bono” Bonnington went on to say: “Delta, delta, delta.” To which Hamilton replied, “Take it easy man”.
The concern over Hamilton’s race cord could have been the threat from Valtteri Bottas. With Max out of the race due to a tire explosion, the Finnish driver who originally raced in P3 charged forward in an attempt to get close to Hamilton.
But Hamilton had distanced himself enough from Bottas by now. And even though the actual Safety Car came out, it didn’t cause a significant deceleration in the ‘delta time’ between him and Bottas.
Hamilton finally pitted around lap 54, with just nine laps remaining. Having built a 35-second lead over Bottas, he exited the pit lane comfortably with the gap intact for around 1.5 seconds.
Hamilton believes delta time ‘was not a problem’ in the race
Hamilton never felt a solid reason to be concerned about losing the lead. As the data suggested, the security car slowed Bottas himself. And so Hamilton would have come out of the pits with ease anyway.
Speaking at the post-race press conference, Hamilton stated: “And delta, I think he’s too cautious and for some reason the safety car was out.”
“And the delta was not a problem at the time. We were pretty low in the delta. ” Hamilton concluded on the subject.
It’s fair to say that the Mercedes driver had his fair share of luck in the race. But again, fortune favors the brave. And on Sunday, it was a 93rd win for the brave Lewis Hamilton.
