Hamilton won't punish himself for 'pretty rubbish day'

Lewis Hamilton is looking forward to moving on from "a pretty rubbish day" in Singapore where the Mercedes driver was uncharacteristically caught out twice by the tricky conditions that marked Sunday's race at Marina Bay.

While he lost a position to Ferrari's Carlos Sainz at the start, Hamilton held a solid P4 behind the Spaniard for over half of the race, a spot that carried the hope of a run to the podium for the Briton.

However, on lap 33, Hamilton locked up into Turn 7 and clobbered the wall. It was a costly error that sent him down to P9 after he was able to extract himself and eventually pit for a new front wing.

But a tussle with his old nemesis Sebastian Vettel in the closing stages of the race led to another off on the very last lap that handed P8 to Max Verstappen.

"I don’t really have much emotion at the moment," said Hamilton who concluded his evening ninth. "It’s a pretty flat, pretty poor day – a pretty rubbish day to be honest.

"But I feel okay – I’m just looking forward to tomorrow."

Hamilton admitted that his lap 33 mistake undid his race and the prospect of a good result.

"I knew it was all over from then," he said. "But these things happen. I mean, I'm not going to punish myself for a mistake.

"I think it was very tricky conditions I would say for everyone, and I think our car, whatever the problems that we have with this car, it's magnified in the rain when it's wet.

"A very, very hard car to drive in the rain."

• Read also: Perez holds off Leclerc to win rain-hit Singapore GP

Asked if he felt he would have had a shot at the podium without his mistake while chasing Sainz, Hamilton said it would have been "slice and dice".

"We would have potentially undercut him, maybe," said the seven-time world champion.

"But it was a battle of not the undercut but who got on the slicks first, and it would have been slice and dice.

"So, I was hoping for that and that was what I was working towards but that went all out the fricking window when I locked up.

"I think I could do similar times to the guys ahead, but because I was stuck behind him, I couldn't. I think if I was third I would have would have kept with the guys up ahead.

"So, my apologies to the team but we live and we learn, and I’ll recover."

Early on, Hamilton buzzed his crew to complain about his inters' lack of grip, saying "I told you about these tyres". The Briton justified the comment.

"I did laps to the grid on the scrubbed [inter], and put the new [inter] on, and it was terrible. It took several laps for temperatures to come up.

"And we can't fire our tyres off as quick as the others for some reason. Both on wets and on slicks.

"So we don't really understand why. But then maybe there's something going on there in terms of temperatures, because then on the long run in the dry we've got good longevity."

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