Lewis Hamilton apologized to Ferrari after a strategy decision during a Virtual Safety Car period turned a potential podium into a sixth-place finish at the Singapore Grand Prix on Sunday. The seven-time champion took personal responsibility for the call that cost his team points, both in a radio message after the checkered flag and in a written statement released by Ferrari.
The Main Development
Hamilton was running third on lap 39 of 62 when a Virtual Safety Car came out, according to the Associated Press. Ferrari called both Hamilton and teammate Charles Leclerc to pit during the VSC window. Hamilton missed the pit entry and then chose to stay out on track rather than complete a late stop, according to The Race.
The decision unraveled quickly. Hamilton had been running as high as second place before the sequence began, but he fell behind Leclerc, then Kimi Antonelli, and finally McLaren’s Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri in the closing laps, dropping him to sixth at the finish.
On the radio after the race, Hamilton told his team: “Sorry boys, I let you down today with that strategy. My call and I lost us valuable points. I’ll try and make up for it in the next one. Great job with the pit stop, though.”
What It Means
Ferrari later issued a fuller statement from Hamilton that laid out his reasoning and the fallout from the Singapore GP mistake. “Today wasn’t the result we were looking for and it was on me,” Hamilton said in the statement provided by Formula1.com. “At a track that’s difficult to overtake, you need to try something different and I chose to start on a new medium tyre, to go long and try to make a one-stop work. Unfortunately the medium didn’t perform as well as the soft.”
Hamilton described the chain of events that led to his tumble down the order. “Under the VSC, the team called me in but I missed the entry. After that, I decided to stay out and try to hold track position to the end but in the closing laps, I was struggling massively with tyre degradation and lost three places, finishing P6, which doesn’t reflect the pace we had in the car today,” he said.
He added: “A painful lesson today, but I take full responsibility for the decisions I made. Not every call will work out, and I can accept getting it wrong but I’m sorry for the team for the points we lost today. They put so much into every weekend, and I wanted to deliver more for them. I’ll continue to put the work in and come back fighting at the next race.”
Context: A Disputed Radio Call
Hamilton’s own words frame the missed pit entry as his decision, but the picture around the VSC period is not entirely clean. The Race reported that Ferrari’s radio communications with Hamilton suffered technical distortion during the VSC window, affecting both his onboard audio and camera feed, even as Ferrari maintains it issued the pit call to Hamilton at the same time it did to Leclerc.
Whatever the cause, the numbers tell the story of the aftermath. Hamilton started the opening stint on medium tires and was the first driver to pit for softs. The Race reported he then ran on those soft tires for 10 laps longer than the other frontrunners, with his lap times at 1 minute, 38.6 seconds or slower while rivals ran one to two seconds faster per lap during that stretch. That gap opened the door for Antonelli, Norris and Piastri to pass him before the finish.
Driver Status After The Race
Hamilton felt unwell following the race and was excused from his media obligations, according to Formula1.com and Sky Sports. He underwent medical checks from the FIA medical team afterward. No further details on his condition were released.
What’s Next
Hamilton said in his Ferrari statement that he intends to “come back fighting at the next race,” though no specific date or location for Ferrari’s next outing was included in the available reporting. The Singapore result follows a stretch in which Hamilton has backed Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur through a podium drought, and it comes as the title fight tightens around Antonelli’s rivals. Antonelli’s pass on Hamilton in Singapore added to a weekend that also saw Max Verstappen win the Singapore sprint race after a late McLaren collision.
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