I would have preferred to stay outside!

Mercedes had by far the best weekend of the Formula 1 season at the Canadian GP. And Lewis Hamilton also secured the best race result of the current year. But the seven-time F1 world champion is not happy about this. Quite the opposite: After the race in Montreal, Hamilton is annoyed about his own performance and surprised by the team’s strategy.

“Yesterday was a pretty disastrous afternoon and today’s race was pretty shocking from our side. So I can’t say I’m very happy.” On paper, the course of the race doesn’t actually look so negative: Hamilton started the race in 7th place, was in a long battle with Fernando Alonso for P5 and in the end just missed the podium.

Lewis Hamilton angry with himself: So many mistakes

But that’s only one side of the coin. On the other hand, the Brit was also the fastest driver on the track at times. For example, immediately after he switched to dry tires, which he was the first of all the top drivers to do. But in the same phase of the race, absolutely fastest laps alternated with costly driving errors. “I simply should have driven better today. Should have made fewer mistakes,” he said, being harsh on himself. “Fewer mistakes over the whole weekend,” he added.

Already in qualifying, he was unable to reproduce his strong performance in the decisive phase. As a result, Hamilton messed up Q3 and only started from P7, while George Russell secured pole position. In the race, the rain showers and safety car phases brought Hamilton back into the fight for the top spots. But in the last stint, he had no chance against Russell.

The reason for this is quite simple: Mercedes put on the hard tyres when it stopped during the safety car phase, while teammate Russell got the mediums. Hamilton doesn’t understand this: “The grip on the hard was terrible,” he says angrily. The problem in this racing situation was that Hamilton had used up his last medium tyre in the previous stint, while Russell was on hards at the time.