Whilst Sebastian Vettel was surprisingly level-headed after his race was effectively ruined by the Red Bull driver, Hamilton has decided to go down the mind games route.
Max tried to make an audacious move around the outside of Hamilton at Turn 7 which ended with a trip across the run-off. Lewis said the move was never going to be possible against a driver like himself:
“Turn 8’s a little bit more possible [to overtake at], but there’s actually a dirty line on the outside of Turn 7. It’s a very fast, long corner. I don’t think any top driver has ever been taken on the outside there before. I didn’t even see him there, I was doing the corner normally.
Hamilton also questioned why he was even trying to pass him at that point, before saying he was glad to benefit from his mistakes.
“When I watch the replay, I don’t really understand what he was up to there, but it wasn’t a problem for me. And yeah, naturally [I’m] thankful for the way he drives, because that meant we didn’t lose too many points today.”
He’s not pulling many punches there, is he? He does have a point though, and you can’t fault him for his honesty at being happy to benefit from the mistakes of others.
It seems that following the Bahrain contact and Hamilton’s ‘dickhead’ comment after the race, a little bit of a rivalry is developing between these two. In fact, after passing Hamilton and Kimi Raikkonen on the first lap, Verstappen said “see you f###ing later, son!” on team radio and was told to settle down by his engineer. If only he’d listened…
