Lewis Hamilton admitted that for a while he had hoped to win the Formula 1 US Grand Prix after taking the lead from Max Verstappen who had been leading for much of the race. Hamilton laments missing out on a win he thought had come his way despite the fact that the really Red Bull was still too strong even with the poor pitstop.

Verstappen had a very long pit stop (over eleven seconds), which allowed Charles Leclerc, who entered the pit lane at the same time as the Dutchman, to emerge in front of the Red Bull while at the same time on track Lewis Hamilton was taking the lead. Max Verstappen then managed to regain the lead over Leclerc and was able to focus on Lewis Hamilton’s car, which he eventually passed with five laps to go.

“What happened to Sainz? George took him out!”

As an aside, it’s worth noting that Hamilton set the Twitter world alight by making his statement that team mate George Russell took out Ferrari pole man Carlos Sainz Jr when quizzed by Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc as to what happened to the Spanish driver.

Leclerc questioned Hamilton about the incident involving Sainz when he saw a Mercedes seemingly hit his Spanish team mate by asking Lewis: “What happened to Carlos?”

Hamilton appeared surprised by the question and replied bluntly: “George took him out.”

charles: what happened to carlos?

lewis: uh… uh… george took him out

I AM IN TEARS pic.twitter.com/uxbxoUEih6

— lor (@Iercsainz) October 23, 2022

One fan observed that Hamilton had, for a split second, looked as if he was going to give a diplomatic answer, but then just decided to tell it how it was. Many agreed that it was hilarious, with one tweet saying that Hamilton was incredibly funny, albeit unintentionally.

“I thought I could hold Max off….”

“It was amazing to be just within shooting distance of Max at certain points in the race,” said Lewis Hamilton.

“We really didn’t know what our pace would be like today.”

“I think in the first stint he was controlling the pace and it was very difficult to hold him off. But in the second phase of the race, after the safety car, I was able to follow him and we did a great job strategically today,

“For a second I thought we might be able to hold him off, but I think the extra Medium tyre they had was a bit too strong compared to us,

“We were aggressive. I’m really proud of the team. I think everyone worked so hard to make improvements here this weekend,

“We’ll hang on to that, we’ll keep pushing and we’ll try to give it our all in the next three [Grands Prix]. It will come to us at some point.”

Lewis Hamilton is yet to win this year; he has three races left before the end of the season to beat the odds.

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