F1 | Mercedes, Hamilton on the contact with Albon: "It seemed like a race accident to me"

It wasn't a great day for Lewis Hamilton. The reigning world champion of Mercedes, after the penalty suffered shortly before the start for having ignored the yellow flags during yesterday's qualifying, he managed to recover up to second position, but in defending himself from Albon in the final laps, with the Red Bull driver eager to win and using soft tyres, he was involved in an accident, in which the Thai himself got the worst of it, as in Brazil last year. Hamilton finished second, but with the five-second penalty imposed on his race time he finished fourth overall behind Leclerc and Norris.

“The team did a great job today, as did Valtteri – Hamilton said. I drove with my heart, I did everything I could, but it was one of those weekends that was a bit like that. I have to improve several things: yesterday I didn't do a good job in qualifying and I'm the only one responsible for it; then this morning it was very unusual to be called back just before the race, but I tried to keep my head down and ride as best I could. With Alex it seemed more like a race accident to me: the penalty made me miss the chance to get on the podium, but that's how it went. The car was fantastic, even if the reliability created a lot of problems for us, but at least we managed to finish the race, so we will get important points. Clearly it could have been a one-two, but I will try to recover in the next races. In the end it wasn't a good weekend for me, but it could have been worse, so that's okay. I'll try to learn from this weekend and improve next time."