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Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff praised Lewis Hamilton for his “extremely fair play” when he offered to let his team mate overtake him during the Japanese Grand Prix.
Hamilton sustained minor damage to his front-right end plate when he and Charles Leclerc touched in turn three at the restart of yesterday’s race. The flick on the outside of the endplate was cracked, and the loss of front downforce gradually became apparent as the first stint wore on.
Mercedes put Hamilton and George Russell onto hard tyres for the restart. Although the damage was slight, Hamilton noticed the increase in understeer as he wasn’t able to match the lap times of Leclerc ahead of him even as the Ferrari driver ran longer on his medium compound tyres:
Lap: 7/53 HAM: 1’38.374Pete BonningtonAnd main loss to George turn 14. It’s about a tenth and a half there.BonningtonAnd think about a little bit more management turn eight.Lap: 9/53 HAM: 1’38.533HamiltonLots of understeer. [Unclear] these guys.BonningtonLewis surface temp balance looks pretty good. Remember this will be a quite long stint.BonningtonDropping some of the lift-and-coast will also help your balance.HamiltonLet me know where I’m losing out.Lap: 10/53 HAM: 1’38.703BonningtonLosses exit 14, exit turn nine. George was a 38.2, as was Leclerc.HamiltonFronts are just so hot.BonningtonCopy. And we’re seeing high deg on the medium runners.Lap: 11/53 HAM: 1’39.292BonningtonSo Leclerc 39.0.BonningtonAnd cars will be stoping soon.Lap: 12/53 HAM: 1’39.202BonningtonLeclerc 39.2.
With Russell closing behind him, and despite any obvious prompt from his team, Hamilton offered to let his team mate by. It cost him around a second to do this, but Russell was able to immediately improve his pace by around eight tenths of a second per lap.
“That was extremely fair play,” Wolff told Channel 4 after the race. “It wasn’t like he was giving up a position for a podium [but] it was really trying to understand why wasn’t he fast at that stage.”
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Mercedes increased Hamilton’s front wing angle during both of his visits to the pits to compensate. By the end of the race his lap times improved and in the final stint, by which time both Mercedes had switched to the medium tyre compound, Hamilton began to close on Russell, who was fighting Oscar Piastri ahead of him.
Lap: 11/53 HAM: 1’39.292, RUS: 1’38.949Marcus DudleyStill on target.DudleySo could be some people coming in this lap.Lap: 12/53 HAM: 1’39.202, RUS: 1’39.212HamiltonMate George is a lot quicker than me. Got too much understeer. Go up two holes.DudleyThat’s Norris in the pit lane.BonningtonOkay copy. Gap ahead 1.9. You’ve got 0.5 behind.DudleySo just make sure we get these tyres to where we need to.Lap: 13/53 HAM: 1’40.240, RUS: 1’38.989HamiltonNeed to let George by?DudleySo Lewis will let you by. Lewis is struggling with a lot of understeer.BonningtonOkay Lewis so we’ll let George by. Let us know if it’s 16 or into one. He is 0.9 behind.RussellOkay, my tyres are good.BonningtonOkay so into 16, please.DudleySo Lewis is going to let you by into 16.Lap: 14/53 HAM: 1’39.053, RUS: 1’38.428DudleyAnd that’s Alonso in the pits now as well.DudleyGeorge we’re seeing some drivers getting picked up for track limits turn 14.
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