Hamilton states "I'm a man of my word" after forfeiting third on the last lap

Hamilton has said he is a man of his word, after giving up third place to teammate Valtteri Bottas on the last lap, after previously being let through into third to challenge the Ferrari’s ahead.

Radio problems hampered Mercedes’ race, with the drivers not being able to send messages to the pit wall and only receive radio transmissions. Hamilton said that once he was on the tail of his teammate, he felt like he had a lot more pace to go after the struggling Ferraris ahead but could not communicate this for a number of laps.

Eventually when radio communications did recommence between the Mercedes drivers and the pit wall, action was swiftly taken to let Hamilton through, after which he immediately pulled away from Bottas. Although he did catch the Ferrari’s ahead, Raikkonen put up an astute defence to keep Hamilton behind and not let him attack the wounded car of Sebastian Vettel.

Perhaps somewhat surprisingly given how close Verstappen was to Bottas and how far Hamilton was ahead of the Finn, Hamilton dropped back by the seven seconds he was in front by and sportingly let Bottas back through.

Hamilton said on the race: "It wasn't perfect [losing radio] but it came back in the end. We managed it the best way we could. I don't know why Ferrari were slow. I thought they were worried about the tyres not going the distance and so were slow but would speed up later but they didn't.

"I had all this pace but I was stuck behind Valtteri and couldn't tell the team I had all this speed to go catch them up. I don't know how many laps I was behind but my tyres took a lot of beating.Once I did get by, I did everything I could until I had to step behind a back marker and went on some rubber on the outside of the track and the tyres started to drop after that."

He then went on to discuss letting his teammate back through on the last lap saying: "It's tough in the championship but I'm a man of my word. I did say that if I can't overtake them I would let him back through. Slowing down seven seconds was tough and I was nervous of losing a place to Verstappen but fortunately I didn't."

Sam Gale