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Lewis Hamilton believes bringing home some points was more important than contemplating an alternate strategy for the Miami GP. Although the Mercedes driver lamented his luck, he believes the overall strong team result was satisfying.
Describing his race and overall performance in the Miami GP, the Briton said:
“I was giving it everything but was a bit stuck behind few people at the beginning, a bit unlucky. But you live and you learn. I got back to sixth, we got points so didn’t lose anything there really.”
The seven-time world champion started the race in fifth but lost two places in the opening laps. Despite his recovery to sixth, pit stop and tire strategies were not enough to help him recover the fifth place. While he and his teammate George Russell were running in fifth and sixth after the safety car, a poor choice of strategy to not change to a fresh set of medium tires cost him a place to his own teammate.
On being asked if his race could have played out differently had he chosen to pit for new tires, or had Mercedes given him a better strategy, Lewis Hamilton said:
“I really don’t know, doesn't really matter. So we got the points and we move on.”
Lewis Hamilton has been outperformed by George Russell for the fourth consecutive time in 2022
The seven-time world champion, who started the season in Bahrain with a podium finish and was running third in the championship, has since been outperformed by his younger teammate George Russell for the fourth race consecutively. While his P6 result in Miami is a recovery from the P13 he scored at Imola, it still only places him sixth in the World Drivers' Championship, 23 points behind his team-mate.
While Imola had a race weekend where the buildup to the race had its fair share of unfortunate moments for Lewis Hamilton, the Miami GP weekend started strong for the Briton in qualifying. Despite Mercedes’ drop in performance, Russell has been able to perform more consistently in the undriveable Mercedes W13 compared to Hamilton. The most painful moment in Imola was when he was lapped by his 2021 championship rival Max Verstappen.
While Hamilton had already ruled himself out of the championship fight at Imola, the lack of a desirable result in Miami was a combination of both him and the Mercedes pit wall not opting for a good race strategy.
