Lewis Hamilton believes that he was quick enough to finish in the top five at the Dutch Grand Prix, but was blighted by his poor qualifying result.
Hamilton, who started 14th after penalties, had an impressive afternoon, coming through to finish eighth, just five seconds behind team-mate George Russell, who had qualified fourth.
The Briton was left to rue what might have been had his Saturday been more successful, but also acknowledged that it was unlikely that a better Saturday would have put him in contention to finish amongst eventual race-winner Lando Norris, and the remainder of the top four.
“If I just qualified like I should have qualified, if I didn’t have the problem of qualifying, then yeah. I think I had the pace today to be definitely in the top five,” said Hamilton, adding: “but if I started fourth, for example, I would have finished at least fourth.”
Starting from the midfield left Hamilton to have more of a fraught race, admitting he “had a lot of fun,” but also explained that a lock-up mid-race somewhat altered his and Mercedes’ strategy plans.
“Well, we planned to do a two-stop, we started on the soft,” he said.
“The soft tyre I think was a very good tyre, it felt much better than my medium tyre on practice today. And the hard tyre was feeling decent, it was really difficult to see what I needed to do, whether to push for it.
“I was on a two, so trying to use up the tyre, but also wasn’t sure whether or not we might possibly go for a one. I had a bit of a lock-up, which kind of then made me just stay on my normal strategy.
“Probably if I had done one stop and managed a little bit better, I probably could have done a one. Maybe finish one spot ahead, but ultimately it wasn’t.”
Hamilton also praised his compatriot Norris’ performance, describing the McLaren’s race pace as “insane”, and his victory margin of almost 23 seconds to hometown hero Max Verstappen as “really impressive.”
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