Hamilton 'paid the price for playing it safe' in sprint

Lewis Hamilton admitted that he had a chance to finish in the points in Saturday's wet sprint race in Austria - but missed out by being too cautious and leaving it too long to change to slick tyres.

Hamilton had started the race from 18th on the grid after having crucial lap times deleted for exceeding track limits during the showdown leaving him too little time to recover.

But he was up to 13th by the end of the first lap, and soon found himself stuck in a train of cars that included Alex Albon, Esteban Ocon, Charles Leclerc, Lando Norris and his own Mercedes team mate George Russell.

• Read also: Verstappen and Perez win entertaining wet Austria sprint

"We had a great first lap," he reported. "And then generally just struggled with the balance of the car. When you get into the wet conditions it highlights the issues you have with the car, and those don't give you confidence."

Russell opted to break out of that by pitting on lap 15 to trade in his intermediate tyres for a set of slicks, the first driver to do so. Hamilton could have followed suit but opted not to, and was left kicking himself.

"I transitioned to the slick way too late," he acknowledged. "I don't really like gambling, so I didn't, and I paid a price for that." Despite that, he admitted that it had been a good day with the pressure off.

"It was fun, I just had a laugh out there," he said, comparing it to his karting days of old. "It was like being at Rye House on a normal weekend, just enjoying yourself," he added.

From Russell's point of view, he was kicking himself for not changing to slicks even sooner than he had.

“In those conditions,, when you’re stuck behind cars it’s really difficult to recognise if it’s spray from the cars ahead or if it’s actually a wet track,” he explained. “So it’s really difficult to judge.

“But I was confident the track was [ready for] slicks," he insisted. "I said for the two laps prior, ‘if this was qualifying, I’d be boxing now for slicks’. Then it’s down to the team to determine if the risk is worth it.

“We had good pace even on the inters," he added. "So we may have made one or two more positions, but it was a team team effort and damage limitation.”

“One, two more laps we would have been three positions higher," he speculated. “I love these conditions, I love the transition, I feel confident in those early laps to feel the grip."

Team boss Toto Wolff had actually feared that Russell has switched too early. “We made that early call for the slicks, which I thought was a lap too early but proved to be the right call.

"We took that very early call knowing that if you want to do something different, you need to take a risk, and that’s what we did, calling it a "brilliant decision from the strategy team

He added that "they made the call and it was bang on, spectacularly right" but that it has been made easier by very little riding on the race today compared to tomorrow's Austrian Grand Prix.

“I’m not sure that in a long race, in the real Grand Prix on Sunday, we would take a similar bold decision," he said. "But it paid off [today] and maybe there’s something to learn from it.”

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