Lewis Hamilton grateful for ‘perfect’ Max Verstappen mistake at Portuguese Grand Prix

F1: Can Lewis Hamilton do it again?

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Lewis Hamilton has extended his lead at the top of the driver’s standings by eight points in an action packed but ‘tough’ Portuguese Grand Prix, with Max Verstappen third and pole sitter Valtteri Bottas third.

Mercedes were pushed to their limits by the Red Bull of Max Verstappen throughout the race, with the Dutchman sweeping past Hamilton for second place on the restart thanks to a brief Safety Car period.

But it was short lived after a mistake from Verstappen gifted Hamilton an opportunity to get back to second and reel in his team-mate for the lead, who was struggling with a sensor issue in the latter part of the race.

“I am telling you, that was such a tough race. Physically and mentally keeping everything together – it was very windy out there so it was very easy to put a foot wrong,” said the seven-time world champion.

“Just didn’t quite get as good of start as Valtteri, and lost out on the [Safety Car] restart which was not good, I was not happy about that naturally.

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“I really had to try and position myself the best I could, I can’t remember – I think Max made a mistake at some point in the lap, which was perfect, and I knew that was going to be the lap that I was going to be as close as I could to him in the last sector.

“And then with Valtteri I had to make the move early on before the tyres were destroyed and managed to just get him at turn on, but right on my limit.

“Next few days is about recovery. A lot of debriefs, obviously a lot to download from today – there’s improvements that we can make.

“Today wasn’t all perfect, so we look at those areas and try and turn over the stones.”

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Meanwhile Verstappen, who has been struggling for pace all weekend, was looking to take the lead of the championship for the first time ever in his career.

However, the 23-year-old concluded today was just not their day.

“It was pretty decent, I had a good restart [after the Safety Car] and then of course I tried to put the pressure on Valtteri, but at the end I think we just lacked a little bit of pace overall so Lewis got by again, and then after the pit stop, the warm up is super hard on these tyres,” Verstappen said.

“But I think once we resettled in second, you could clearly see around here we were lacking a bit of pace compared to them [Mercedes].

“But still, second and fastest lap on the last lap.”

But Verstappen hadn’t been told his fastest lap, which is worth a point and went to Bottas instead, was deleted for track limits at turn 14.

“Really? That’s a bit odd because they were not checking track limits at turn 14, but whatever,” he added.

“I think in general this was a bit of an odd weekend in terms of grip, and we were not on top of it here, but we will see what we can do in Barcelona.”

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