Lewis Hamilton returned to the podium at the Spanish Grand Prix on Sunday, but he wasn’t totally satisfied with his race.
Sky Sports F1 were forced to issue an apology after Lewis Hamilton cursed his ‘s*** start’ at the Spanish Grand Prix during the broadcasted cooldown room.
The seven-time world champion secured his first podium of the season after passing Mercedes team-mate George Russell during the final stint, but he believed that with a better launch, he would have been in the fight for victory.
Hamilton started the race from third on the grid but immediately lost out to Russell before falling back into the clutches of the Ferrari duo, Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc.
Chatting with fellow podium-sitters Max Verstappen and Lando Norris in the cooldown room, Hamilton suggested that without a “s*** start” he would have been in the fight at the front. The Brit’s foul-mouthed assessment of his lap-one launch forced commentator David Croft to make an apology.
Despite his frustrations over the early portion of the race, Hamilton made clear his delight with Mercedes’ performance around the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.
It has been a good day, a solid weekend,” he said after the chequered flag. “I have to say a big thank you to the team as they have been training so hard. The strategy and the pitstops were really on point.
Unfortunately I got a really bad start and lost ground to the Ferraris so it was a battle to get back. With a better start… I don’t know if we could have held on to the guys ahead but I don’t think we would have been as far behind.”
