“I would never have stopped” - Lewis Hamilton critical of Ferrari’s Hungary strategy

Lewis Hamilton says he “would never have stopped” under a virtual safety car in the latter stages of the Formula 1 Hungarian Grand Prix, losing him track position.

The Ferrari driver recovered from a three-place grid penalty, which dropped him to fifth for the start, to run inside the podium places after his second pit stop.

But when the VSC was called late on after Oscar Piastri stopped on track with a gearbox issue, Ferrari elected to bring Lewis Hamilton in from second for a set of soft tyres.

Though he rejoined in third, he ceded a place to Andrea Kimi Antonelli to avoid a penalty for potentially overtaking him under VSC.

Hamilton took the chequered flag in fourth, but was penalised five seconds for pitlane speeding, dropping him to fifth.

“I would never have stopped if it would have meant giving up track position,” he said to the media after the race.

“So, I thought that would not be the case. I think we probably would have lost out to Max [Verstappen] - he was on fresher tyres - I would imagine, in that last stint.

“Maybe I would have been able to hold onto P2. He was catching me. But most likely it would have been P3. But lost a bunch of points.

“As I said, I was P2, I should have just stayed out. But I need to go and see why the team called me in.”

Penalty pain piling up for Hamilton

Hamilton’s five-second penalty for pitlane speeding was his fourth punishment in three races, following his grid drop for impeding on Saturday.

At Silverstone, he was given a five-second penalty for a false start, as well as one for a collision with George Russell at Spa.

On his spate of penalties, Hamilton said: “Ultimately I think the last three races have been pretty bad from my side.

“We did talk in the drivers briefing about the fact that they are inconsistent with the start [after Silverstone].

“Drivers in the past have moved and haven’t been penalised. We discussed with them the fact that, so long as you are not moving when the last lights are on, you shouldn’t be penalised because I wasn’t out of my box.

“So, they’re looking into that for the future. The last race, even the driver I collided with said it was a racing incident, and they gave me [a penalty].

“I think that one was not needed. That cost me a lot of points. The one yesterday was just unfortunate. I take responsibility for being on track. I should have looked in my mirrors.”

Ferrari was expected to be the favourite in Hungary, but ultimately walked away without a podium for either of its cars.

Hamilton believes Ferrari did a good job overall in executing its race strategy, but acknowledged that his grid penalty hampered his chances.

“They executed it pretty decently today,” he said of his team.

“I think definitely I had the pace to compete at least for the top two, top three.

“I think if we didn’t have the penalty yesterday, we would have been in a much better position at the end. But, it was not meant to be.”