HUNGARORING, Hungary -- Lewis Hamilton says his respect for Valtteri Bottas and Mercedes ultimately swayed his decision to let his teammate back past on the final lap of the Hungarian Grand Prix.
During the second stint, with Mercedes suffering intermittent losses of data on the pit wall, Hamilton requested to be let past Bottas to attack the Ferraris as race leader Sebastian Vettel struggled with a car hampered by a steering issue. When the request finally got through to Mercedes on lap 46 Bottas moved over, with Hamilton telling Mercedes he would let his teammate back through if he was unable to pass the Kimi Raikkonen, who was losing time behind the other Ferrari.
Despite closing up to Raikkonen, Hamilton was unable to find a way past the Ferrari on the narrow Hungaroring circuit and slowed on the final lap to give the place to Bottas as promised, managing to do so without being passed by Max Verstappen in the process. Hamilton saw giving the place back as a routine part of his job after what Bottas had done for him.
"Valtteri and I have a great amount of respect for one another," he said. "Just as the team asked him to do a job and he did it, the same thing came my way. The same rule applies to me. I did it for the team."
After the race, Hamilton said he had let his head rule his heart when making the decision to switch back on the final corner. His motivation for initially asking Mercedes to let him past Bottas was because he believed he had the better chance of winning the race.
"My thought process in that I'm faster than the guy, I think I can have a chance of winning this race, let me go. Give me that chance otherwise we are just wasting potential points for the team. In my mind I'm like if I can't pull away, I just go into reverse. I think if I had kept my positions -- I think there were reasons to -- with the risk of the backmarkers and risked letting him back through too late, which is unnecessary when you are fighting for a championship.
"He was seven seconds behind, he had the Red Bull behind him and I had backmarkers around me so it was a little risky but I tried to wait it out and balance it."