Lewis Hamilton’s heart sank on the formation lap. He had walked down the Ferrari pit lane before Sunday’s race at Sepang, looked at a surface still slick from a long rain delay, and told the pit wall twice that the asphalt was wet.
Ferrari did not change course. The team sent Hamilton and teammate Charles Leclerc out on soft dry tyres while Max Verstappen and most of the field left the grid on intermediates.
Hamilton had qualified on the front row behind polesitter Verstappen and lost positions almost immediately. By his own account, he was more than a minute off the lead by the time the circuit started to dry.
“It’s a mixed emotion. On one side, I’m really, really grateful to have got back to the podium. And then on the other side, with the debates that we were having in the background, to then see the covers come off the car ahead and the one behind, them on wets and us on slicks, and the track being so tricky and dangerous at the beginning, it was definitely… my heart sank, and I was like, ‘that’s the race over.’”
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‘No, let’s take the gamble’
Ferrari came back on the radio inside the opening laps to call Hamilton in for intermediates. He waved them off.
“No, let’s take the gamble,” Hamilton told the pit wall.
The engineers queried him again as the laps piled on. He waved them off a second time.
“Then they were like, ‘should we stop?’ And I was like, ‘no, we’ve already made the decision, we have to live with it. And we’ll stay out here until this bloody place dries.’”
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The circuit did dry. Hamilton picked his way through the order and passed Red Bull’s Isack Hadjar with three laps to go to secure third behind race winner Verstappen. Leclerc, who had first-lap contact with Nico Hulkenberg, finished fourth.
“I definitely didn’t expect to get back to P3,” Hamilton said afterwards.
The casino line
Asked about overriding his own strategists, Hamilton grinned.
“Yeah, not going to go to the casino with the guys!”
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He softened the line soon afterwards.
“You know, I’m really so proud of my team. Their hearts are all in the right spot.”
Hamilton also pointed to what the day might have been without the opening-lap confusion.
“I thought today was a chance for us potentially to try and fight Max for the win, but maybe we can do that next week.”
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Ferrari collected 27 points from the Malaysian round and sit second in the constructors’ standings. Hamilton remains 22 points behind George Russell in the drivers’ table.
The next race is the Singapore Grand Prix at Marina Bay on Sunday, 11 October.
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