Two clashes with the barriers, six pit stops, one penalty and a ninth-placed finish for Hamilton on a wretched Sunday for Mercedes
Sunday 28 July 2019 22:07, UK
Lewis Hamilton said he was "only human" after the "worst day I’ve had in the office for a long time" as uncharacteristic errors played their role in a dismal German GP for Mercedes.
The world champion finished ninth from pole position at Hockenheim, rising up two places from his original finish of 11th after both Alfa Romeo drivers were handed 30s penalties after the race.
Valtteri Bottas crashed out late on as Mercedes struggled in a crazy, topsy-turvy, wet-dry race.
Hamilton had led convincingly until lap 29 in changeable conditions but an error at what proved to be the race's most incident-filled corner - Turn 16, the long final turn - sent the Englishman sliding into the barriers, broke his car's front wing and steered his afternoon into a tailspin.
A 50-second pit stop as he arrived at an unprepared Mercedes garage, was followed by a five-second time penalty for an incorrect entry to the pit lane, and then three further tyre stops - plus another spin, when Hamilton again touched the barriers.
"It's been a bad day - bad weekend," Hamilton told Sky Sports F1.
"There's not really much to say. It's probably the worst day I've had in the office for a long, long time."
Hamilton revealed after qualifying that he had been feeling unwell all weekend and Mercedes had briefly considered whether he would be fit to take part.
"It's not been an easy weekend overall. But I was leading the race and I was feeling good. It wasn't meant to be this weekend," said the world champion in his later press conference.
"I'm only human. I don't know what else to say, it was a mistake and mistakes happen."
How it all went wrong for Mercedes
Hamilton said his second pit stop on lap 28 - one lap before he went into the barriers - changed his afternoon.
"The turning point was when they put slicks on and it was still wet," reflected the Mercedes driver.
"It was difficult because other people had put slicks on but I stayed out because it was still wet. I kept going as far as I could on the inters. As they called me in I could see there was more rain coming down but they have usually more knowledge than I do.
"If we had put inters on and it was the wrong call it would have been costly. It turns out by not telling them to put inters on even though others had put slicks on and were doing ok…it just happened I put my slicks on when Leclerc went off it just started to rain more."
Of Hamilton's subsequent incident and delayed pit stop, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff told Sky F1: "It was unfortunate because he crashed right at the entry of the box of the pit lane and you're not prepared and we made the wrong calls afterwards."
Nonetheless, Hamilton described the shock result as ultimately a "culimination of things" that went wrong for the team and it was "one domino after another" which fell the wrong way for them.
Bottas crash caps Mercedes woes
While Hamilton ran last at one point, Bottas had still been fourth after the third of four Safety Cars - two places ahead of ultimate second-place finisher Sebastian Vettel - and had one Racing Point and one Toro Rosso ahead of him.
But in his attempt to put pressure on Lance Stroll, Bottas instead crashed heavily at the first corner - scuppering his hopes of taking a significant chunk out of Hamilton's now 41-point lead over him in the championship.
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