Lewis Hamilton put his Lap 2 spin during Formula 1‘s United States Grand Prix down to his upgraded Mercedes W15, rather than pure driver error.
Hamilton’s GP was already looking like a bleak affair thanks to a Q1 exit in qualifying that resigned him to 17th on the grid.
However, an incredible opening lap saw him surge up the field to 12th and things started to look promising.
But alas, a spin on Lap 2, unprompted by any rival drivers at Turn 19 was all she wrote for Hamilton’s Sunday afternoon.
“Yeah, I had a great start,” Hamilton told media including Motorsport Week with the US GP racing on without him.
“I was feeling good, got up to 12th. [It was my] best start really in Turn 1 that I’ve had in a long time.”
Coming to the moment his race came undone, Hamilton said “I wasn’t even pushing it at that point. I was literally just trying to bring the tyres up to temperature.
“The car started bouncing. The left front started bouncing, and the rear end just came around. Same as George [Russell] yesterday.”
Hamilton was running with the upgrades Mercedes brought to the Circuit of the Americas this weekend, the same ones that Russell scrapped on his W15 with a Turn 19 crash in Saturday’s qualifying session.
The seven-time world champion argued that all weekend the upgraded Mercedes was on a knife edge.
“In FP1, I had the spin in Turn 3, which is so rare,” Hamilton said.
“I’ve never spun in Turn 3 in all the years that I’ve been here, and I’ve never spun [at Turn 19] before either.
“I was just saying that, you know, George [Russell] obviously had the same problem yesterday, and he’s gone back to the old spec car, and he’s looking good out there, so maybe there’s something with our new upgrade.”
Russell however, didn’t feel the upgrades were the reason behind the Mercedes drivers spinning out of sessions, saying “I managed to change the set-up a bit because of the parts from the start.
“[It was] nothing really to do with the upgrades.
“Yeah, it’s pretty complicated for me to say.”
With the Mexico City GP just days away, Hamilton is raring to get back in the Mercedes W15 and put his COTA mistake behind him.
“I’m glad we’ll be driving in four days’ time,” he said.
“I’ve never spun in a race. It wasn’t that I wasn’t focused or anything. I’ve just never had this problem with the car before.”
READ MORE: Lewis Hamilton spins out of F1 US GP on second lap
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