Lewis Hamilton explains request to retire from German GP

Lewis Hamilton

Hamilton explains request to retire from German GP

He told Mercedes: 'Retire the car.'

Matthew Scott

Friday 2 August 2019 11:14 Updated: 12:06

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Lewis Hamilton says he wanted to retire from the German Grand Prix in order to save engine mileage.

Hamilton's race began to fall apart when he spun into the wall on Lap 31 of a crazy race in the wet, picking up a penalty for diving into the pits the wrong way, where the Silver Arrows were not ready to service him.

Hamilton spun again on Lap 53 and as he was called into the pits, facing a fall to last place, Hamilton told Mercedes over team radio: "Retire the car."

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The Briton had battled illness throughout the Hockenheim event and later told BBC Sport: "It felt like the world was ending for me for a lot of time."

However, race engineer Pete Bonington rejected Hamilton's request, replying: "Negative, Lewis, negative. There's always opportunities."

Explaining his request, Hamilton said at the Hungarian GP: "Mostly it was just thinking 'OK, I'm dead last'. I calculate the chances of me getting points and I think about how many races have we got left to do on this engine.

"I think could I save it with another 15 laps left of engine mileage? I can save the gearbox.

"I start thinking of those kind of things and I'm like 'don't feel bad if you feel like pulling me in, guys'. But they said don't, keep going, so I kept going. So that's how I'm always thinking."

Hamilton also revealed that his caution over engine wear spills over to practice sessions ahead of grands prix.

He said: "They say 'you've got 23 laps in practice one', I'll do 20. But they'll also say 'no, we've calculated that you can do 23 laps, or even 24 laps, we've proven out the engine'. I'm still cautious.

"I'll do 20, 21 just to make sure that when, for example, you come to a race and you have to go back to another engine, in some cases you do because it comes back out of the pool, usually I have less mileage on my engine than the other driver. Hopefully I won't have any mishaps with the engine. So that's what I'm conscious of, always."