Hamilton was 'gutted' for Leclerc after French GP blunder

A sympathetic Lewis Hamilton said he was "gutted" for Charles Leclerc after the Ferrari driver's massive blunder while leading the French Grand Prix.

Leclerc threw away a potential race win at Paul Ricard, not to mention his title hopes, when he crashed in the first part of the race while leading proceedings.

The Monegasque's mistake handed championship leader Max Verstappen another big bag of points that allowed the Red Bull driver to grow his lead over his rival in the Drivers' standings to 63 points.

As a F1 fan, Hamilton has never hidden his fondness of Ferrari, and given Mercedes' secondary role this season in the championship, a win by the House of Maranello is the next best thing for the seven-time world champion.

"It’s been great to see the pace of the Ferrari this year," Hamilton said after the French Grand Prix. "I’m gutted for Charles, who’s being doing a great job, as has Carlos.

"It’s not easy though, having that pace and that performance and maintaining it. It’s a tough job and I feel for the whole team because I know what that can feel like.

"But they’re a great team, and they’ll continue to keep their heads down. Yeah, massive gaps, obviously pretty huge so that’s pretty smooth sailing in that space generally.

"But a lot still can go wrong up ahead so I would just advise them just to continue to push."

• Read also: Calling Leclerc error-prone is an 'unfair judgement' - Binotto

In Sunday's race which he finished a season best P2, Hamilton admitted to being impressed by Verstappen's velocity down Paul Ricard's Mistral straight, which inevitably also highlighted Mercedes' top speed weakness.

"I was trying to keep up with Max, but he's just so fast," Hamilton said. "I was kind of keeping with him for maybe two laps, but I'm full blast down the straight and he's pulling away.

"I think today was one of the biggest straight-line deficits we've had. If you're losing three or four tenths on the straights, there's nothing you can do about that.

"So we've got to work to improve that for the future. I'm sure there's a couple other places that we could be better."

Hamilton believes that F1's new regulations have had a positive impact on the sport overall. But the Briton hopes that the more teams will move closer to the leaders in the future.

"With the rules, the rule change I think has been positive in many ways, however it’s not necessarily really changed the order as such," he said.

"If you look, there’s always been two teams most likely at the front and there’s been that middle-pack gap and even coming into these new rules, regulations, you’ve pretty much seen that same thing.

"So I’m hoping that the rules progress and improve and the teams can all be a little bit closer."

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