Lewis Hamilton said he was "very shocked" that Mercedes asked him to
move aside and let team mate and title rival Nico Rosberg through at the
Hungaroring.
The Briton had moved ahead of Rosberg, who started
from pole, after the second round of pit stops, but the two drivers were
on differing strategies: Hamilton had switched to the medium compound
and was set to run until the finish, while Rosberg was on the softs and
needed to stop again.
Mercedes asked Hamilton to move aside for
Rosberg, but the Briton declined and after finishing the race in third,
0.5s ahead of the German, he explained why.
"I was in the same
race as him - just because he had one more stop than me doesn't mean I
wasn't in the same race as him," Hamilton said.
"And naturally
if I'd have let him past, he would have had the opportunity to pull away
and when he does pit, he's going to come back and overtake me, so I was
very, very shocked that the team would ask me to do that, to be able to
better his position.
"He didn't get close enough to overtake
but I was never going to lift off and lose ground to Fernando [Alonso]
or Daniel [Ricciardo] to enable him [Nico] to have a better race. So
that was a bit strange."
Toto Wolff, Mercedes-Benz’s head of
motorsport, said that the team will review the decision to ask Hamilton
to let Rosberg by, adding: “We will do this calmly and work our way
through any confusion or misunderstanding. There were so many things
influencing the decisions we made and we must still determine whether we
were right or not.”
Hamilton said that his anguish on Saturday,
when he was eliminated at the start of qualifying because of a fuel
leak, made his eventual third place all the sweeter.
"I can't
express to you the pain that you feel when you have issues such as the
issues that I've had in the last couple of races," he said.
"It's
very, very difficult to swallow, and, to come back the next day and get
the right balance between not attacking too much, and not making
mistakes, all these different things…obviously when you're at the back
you're having to push way past the limit than perhaps you would from
pole position or in the top five.
"The fact that I've managed to
come back through obviously is a showing of just how great this car is
and how great this team is - but ultimately we've worked, I've worked,
hard for it so it feels probably better than perhaps a win, gliding from
the lead.
"It feels definitely much more satisfying when you
come back through. And, as I said, to be ahead and to win the fight is
really encouraging."
As a result of finishing third, Hamilton has
cut Rosberg's championship lead to just 11 points - the duo on 202 and
191 points respectively. Race winner Daniel Ricciardo is third on 131.
(source: f1.com)
