Lewis Hamilton said he decided to attack his team mate immediately after the first round of pit stops because he believed he would crack under pressure.
Hamilton’s strategists advised him to hold back immediately after catching Nico Rosberg following their pit stops at Monza but Hamilton closed on his team mate instead. Shortly afterwards Rosberg made a mistake which handed Hamilton the win.
“I’ve got a great team of people that work with me during the race and always give me advice and really guiding me,” Hamilton told reporters after the race. “And it’s advice, it’s not ‘you have to do this’. And it’s for us to work together so they give me a bit of information, I have to take that and I have to decide how I use that.”
“And just at the time I felt like I had the pace on Nico and I felt like I had a good balance and I felt I’ve got to use it now otherwise the opportunity will not come later on, I was certain of it.
“Because in the first stint I caught up but my tyres were old, sliding all over the place, I couldn’t get close enough. So I knew that would be the best time to do it and put pressure on him. I did it a couple of races ago and he doesn’t seem to like it do I’ll try and do it always now.”
Hamilton had to fight back after losing three places when the race began when his start mode failed to engage.
“It’s a launch button that we press – and everyone will have it – which engages a launch map<" he explained. "So when you stop, you do your bite point find, and then you select gear and you accelerate a little bit and the map helps you control the rpm and then you let the clutch out and do the perfect start." "And it wasn't working so I pressed it for the formation lap, didn't work so I pulled away. And then I thought 'no problem, it'll work on the next time'. "And it didn't, and so I had to just floor it and nailed it and was just wheelspinning on the spot so everyone got a much better start but I'm really grateful that I was able to not lose too many places." Hamilton said that after that he had to tell himself it was still possible to win the race. "Today was another hard day but I loved every minute of it, to be honest," he said. "Of course when you have those issues, particularly knowing how quick Nico would be and the position I was, I was like I'm never going to be able to catch this back." "But you can't let that kind of sink to deep into your thoughts. You just have to think 'I can do it'."
2014 Italian Grand Prix
- Hamilton voted Driver of the Weekend for third time
- Monza keeps up F1’s run of satisfying races
- 2014 Italian Grand Prix fans’ video gallery
- Sponsor watch: 2014 Italian Grand Prix
- 2014 Italian Grand Prix team radio transcript
Image © Daimler/Hoch Zwei
Sridhar
7th September 2014, 16:28
Hamilton is so full of himself. How utterly arrogant
He is trying to provoke a confrontation. Very unsportsmanlike.
John Well
7th September 2014, 16:35
Every time he has been under pressure he made those types of mistakes: Monaco, Canada and even Belgium. Personally I agree with Hamilton and I am not going to criticize him for telling truth.
John Well
7th September 2014, 16:37
*the –>
Dom (@3dom)
7th September 2014, 16:39
I can understand that sometimes what he has tweeted or said can sometimes be taken badly. But if you’d watched the interview I don’t think that any major offence could be taken. Sometimes seeing comments in print can cause a different tone to be interpreted. From my view very mature and experienced driving & insight
Pete (@repete86)
7th September 2014, 17:39
+1
neil (@f1-neil)
7th September 2014, 16:43
Read the actual words, not the headline. It is very reveling and utterly nothing like you are tying to make out.
He uses the words pressure, nothing about cracking.
ShoponF (@shoponf)
7th September 2014, 17:33
Well said…
Uzair Syed (@ultimateuzair)
7th September 2014, 16:47
No he isn’t. He just said what exactly happened. Hamilton put Rosberg under pressure, forcing Rosberg to make a mistake.
Slowhands (@slowhands)
7th September 2014, 16:47
Sports is all about provoking confrontations within the rules and see who cracks. See who has both the physical and yes, MENTAL skill to prevail. I thought HAM did a superb job all around this weekend, both driving and mentally. If he can stay in the mental sweet spot he was in this weekend and has no more serious mechanical issues, he will win the championship no question.
kpcart
7th September 2014, 17:53
which is quite surprising, maybe it was luck, as usually Hamilton has the weak head. he did great this weekend.
Slowhands (@slowhands)
7th September 2014, 19:28
Agree. He has made a mental adjustment in the interval since Spa (maybe it was how the team ended up handling the confrontation?) but he was in a very level-headed mood and very team-oriented this weekend. Maybe, just maybe, he’s finally seeing the bigger picture, which is really good news for all his other weapons.
D (@f190)
7th September 2014, 16:47
@sridhar
Did you watch the interview or just read the headline ? Even reading the article you can see it wasn’t him being arrogant.
Trenthamfolk (@)
7th September 2014, 17:02
Lol… is all I’ll say!
SeanG (@seang)
7th September 2014, 17:32
Dude – do you actually read the words or better yet, listen to the interview(s)?
Sumedh
7th September 2014, 17:34
Sridhar, sounds like you are the one trying to provoke a confrontation.
pking008 (@pking008)
7th September 2014, 20:58
Did you actually listened to Lewis interview or just decide he is arrogant because of your dislike for him? Even, Nico just confirmed that he cracked under Lewis pressure on Sky News now. What more do you people want from Lewis before you stop hating on him?
GTT
7th September 2014, 16:31
Comon! That were team orders Louis and you know it
Bee
19th September 2014, 10:04
Louis??.. Louis Vuitton or??.. I think he is dead! I don´t know if it was a team order behind his dead!
By the way, I´m pretty sure it was NO team order from Mercedes to Lewis Hamilton at Monza, but I´m not sure if You are intressed in that.
Mach1 (@mach1)
7th September 2014, 16:31
Yeh! Winning is so unsportman like!!!!
Osvaldas31 (@osvaldas31)
7th September 2014, 16:34
I don’t think he knew Rosberg would crack, he’s telling so, because he plays some mind games. Yes, he made one mistake, but if I were him, I wouldn’t have expected Rosberg to repeat the same mistake.
Lancer033 (@lancer033)
7th September 2014, 17:35
Rosberg has been acting desperate for a few races now. It’s pretty clear the pressure is getting to him.
medman
7th September 2014, 23:42
Rosberg isn’t quite desperate yet…..but let a few mechanical gremlins effect his car the way they have Lewis’ in qualifying and in the races…then you will see that man sweat…because in his heart he knows that if the bad luck Lewis has suffered this season had befallen him, this championship would already be over with Lewis well and truly sprinting off in the points.
David BR2
7th September 2014, 20:31
At Canada Rosberg missed a chicane when under pressure from Hamilton, closing in on him fast. Same scenario, same result. A repeat actually does seem very possible.
lucho19 (@lucho19)
7th September 2014, 21:30
I think he knew…ROS made the same mistake before ..same place….without HAM direct pressure.
Looks like ROS is loosing his cool. Plus now the mind games are evident.
Last race, that banzai move on HAM was not precisely on a cool head…It was just the 2nd lap!
He is really feeling the pressure by now.
greg-c (@greg-c)
8th September 2014, 12:08
I think Lewis needs to play the tough mind game with Nico ,
Nico smells gold but he’s never been in this position ,
Lewis has been in pressure situations from his first F1 ,
It’s all still to play for !!
These guys are going into life and death battle now, (cue music) BA BAH BARMMMMMM!!!!!!!
It’s getting better and better ,
We’ll scripted Bernie
I’m loving this season
Slowhands (@slowhands)
8th September 2014, 14:44
would have been an even better season if Renault and Ferrari hadn’t f-d up their powertrains. Mercedes took them to school on the engine, and the chassis ain’t too bad either. Guess my next road car will have to be a Merc. Hope I can afford one.
ADD (@addimaf1)
7th September 2014, 16:38
He’s not being arrogant he’s telling the truth, he only said he wanted to apply pressure on Rosberg and see what happens as after the stops as Hamilton is better on brand new tires, it also worked. He did the same thing at Silverstone after the stops Hamilton was mighty, and then like now a Nico problem prevented us from having a battle.
lucho19 (@lucho19)
7th September 2014, 21:34
+1. I was expecting a nice battle. HAM was inching up around 0.2 seconds per lap and was already around 1.20 seconds behind….only 0.2 secs (1 or 2 laps) before HAM could get into the DRS option and then have a full attack on ROS.
Damn we missed that ! I t should have been a phenomenal duel !
manu
8th September 2014, 8:57
He was .6 behind at that point, so the next lap he was gonna be a lot closer, maybe .2 or something.
kpcart
7th September 2014, 16:38
Hamilton needs mental positivity, when he is on a high he wins, but when he is under pressure he cracks. he got lucky that rosberg cracked today, but looking at the time intervals between them today, Hamilton can not dominate Rosberg like champions like Vettel, Alonso and Schumacher dominated their teammates. the end result for this season is a toss up, both drivers not in the best 3 in the sport, both make too many mistakes. one will winn the championship and be remembered for may years as a true f1 champion. if only the series was designed in a way that the series was equal in machinery – yet still the fastest in the world, then we would have a true drivers championship, and this year Ricciardo and Alonso would be the ones fighting for the championship not these 2 Mercedes clowns.
Avl
7th September 2014, 16:40
2007
Lancer033 (@lancer033)
7th September 2014, 17:36
There are plenty of spec car series out there. The engineering and car development is part of what makes F1 what it is.
matt
7th September 2014, 17:41
lewis has had so many knocks this season,and bounced back.australi,monaco,hungary,germany,spa etc.so to say he cracks under pressure despite winning after getting a puncture in the last race,and having a glitch at the start of this race,proves your claims wrong.
Wil-Liam (@wil-liam)
7th September 2014, 19:18
+100
Avl
7th September 2014, 16:39
Well i guess it really is true that the germans don’t like it up ’em…
Kingshark (@kingshark)
7th September 2014, 16:39
To be honest, after seeing the replay of Rosberg’s second “mistake”, I’m inclined to believe that it was probably team orders.
Nico could have quite comfortably made the chicane (IMO) – even if he didn’t – cutting the edge of the chicane (Bottas-Magnussen) would have lost him far less time than going through the twisty route.
Rosberg also was strangely slow when Hamilton past him, then suddenly sped up and kept the gap at 4 seconds for the rest of the race.
Likewise, if the mistake was genuine, he surely wouldn’t look as happy and cheery on the podium as he did.
I’m usually not the first to buy conspiracy theories, but this one is more likely to be true IMO.
Dom (@3dom)
7th September 2014, 16:43
Hmm I just think he didn’t want to risk flat spotting his tyres so early into 30 lap stint
Robert (@gicu)
7th September 2014, 18:43
+1, most probable.
MilleniumBug (@milleniumbug)
7th September 2014, 19:09
Yeah he did mention that in the Sky interview
MilleniumBug (@milleniumbug)
7th September 2014, 16:43
And Rosberg will just yield to the team orders yeah
Iestyn Davies (@fastiesty)
7th September 2014, 16:55
If issued like that (response to Spa), he would have to – or they could impose something even worse.
Avl
7th September 2014, 16:47
Look at malaysia 2013 and how uncomfortable hamilton was knowing he didnt deserve the podium place due to team orders. If this was team orders then there’s no way he knew about it.
Ryan (@ryanisjones)
7th September 2014, 18:17
+1
Edvaldo
7th September 2014, 17:20
He didn’t keep the gap at 4 seconds.
Hamilton build that gap.
When Rosberg made that mistake, the advantage Hamilton had was less than 2 seconds.
He build it up to 4 than went on cruise mode.
Hamilton had a better set up for his car all weekend. Wasn’t for the bad start, it would be like this the whole race.
N
7th September 2014, 17:25
Nonsense.
If he wanted to give him the place he could very easily have done a slow in and/or outlap from his pitstop, it wouldnt have looked obvious to the naked eye, and he wouldn’t have risked ruining his tyres by locking wheels.
Despite Hamilton falling back to 4th at the start and Rosberg having clear air, he couldn’t pull away, then when Hamilton got past the slower cars and caught right onto the back of Rosberg and stayed within 1.3secs for about 20 laps, which shows he had a bit more pace than Rosberg, when you can stay that close for so long in turbulant air. Evidently once Hamilton got past Rosberg, the gap grew to almost 5seconds to a point where Hamilton could just manage his pace and not over work his car/tyres
matt
7th September 2014, 17:43
explain why they told lewis to stay 2.5 seconds behind nico,if they were planning that deliberate move….
Mayank (@mjf1fan)
7th September 2014, 17:46
Matt can you explain me why Toto smiled after Rosberg missed the first chicane and took the escape road the second time in the race?
Ryan (@ryanisjones)
7th September 2014, 18:20
Maybe because Hamilton was going to catch Rosberg anyway, and by Rosberg making a mistake Toto didn’t have to worry about them crashing.
That was the best way for Hamilton to get in front of Rosberg for Mercedes hence the smile. It does not mean Mercedes ordered it to happen.
Avl
7th September 2014, 20:06
Toto could also just still be kinda mad at Rosberg for Spa. You don’t know what’s going on in that team and I know people sometimes like to think Rosberg is the team favourite but it’s pretty clear that Lauda prefers Hamilton and maybe Paddy and Toto do too, doesn’t mean they will act on it at all but you can’t help it if you prefer someones attitude as a person/racer.
pking008 (@pking008)
7th September 2014, 21:11
Toto smiled even more with a bit of a shake of the head when Nico couldnt overtake Vettel in Spa and ran straight flatspotting his tyres. So what happened then? Another deal?
Mayank (@mjf1fan)
7th September 2014, 17:45
Agree with you @kingshark , also Toto’s smile after that second mistake by Rosberg makes me think that this was the other ‘disciplinary action’ they took on Rosberg besides the monetary penalty .
Edvaldo
7th September 2014, 18:00
Yeah, the disciplinary action is “hand over the lead you’re about to lose anyway”.
A really light action, i must say.
Kingshark (@kingshark)
7th September 2014, 20:11
Lewis couldn’t get past Nico in Canada on track despite being over 0.5 sec/lap quicker, so I doubt he would have passed him here.
John Well
7th September 2014, 21:14
In that case why did Roseberg cut the chicane. and for your info Ham did pass him and lost the place again because of brake problem. How many time has Rosberg beaten Hamilton on track by passing him without any controversy?
DaveW (@dmw)
8th September 2014, 1:33
NB:Hamilton made the pass just before his brakes went.
Kingshark (@kingshark)
8th September 2014, 1:39
@dmw
Yeah, in the pits.
Lewis was at no point even able to pull alongside Nico in Canada, despite being half a second/lap faster on the prime tyres.
DaveW (@dmw)
9th September 2014, 16:40
My bad—Rosberg just went off under pressure, beginning a theme with him. In the pits, on the road, off the road, whatever, bottom line is that Rosberg has yet to beat Hamilton in a fight on the track. Maybe he is not as hungry, amirite?
Mark in Florida
7th September 2014, 21:10
Yes the Mercedes team strategy is to mentally beat Rosberg down for the win when the Fia said there was nothing to punish. Then they supposedly fined him for the incident on top of that. Mentally cracked? When your own team won’t have your back. When you’re leading the championship and they declare to the media that your some kind of pariah within the team do you wonder why he’s under so much pressure? Toto go back to oz your no good here.
grat
7th September 2014, 22:44
You’re buying into an Eddie Jordan conspiracy. One that has a huge number of holes. For it to work, we have to have:
A) Mercedes knew Lewis would bog at the start
B) Mercedes knew Lewis would recover, and be a threat
C) Mercedes either used a better code than the Enigma device, or were relying to Nico to determine the best time to screw up his own race.
All of this after Nico was forced to make a large donation to charity and to publicly apologize for an incident that he’d been defending for two weeks as “not his fault”.
Seriously– the flat earth society has better logic than this.
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
7th September 2014, 22:52
@kingshark I find the idea that Rosberg would not only willingly give up a victory to Hamilton, but do so in a fashion that makes himself look incompetent, to be extremely unrealistic.
manu
8th September 2014, 9:05
No because going over the bumps at speed would definitely launch you off the track (remember Chilton) so in order to go over the bumps safely he would have to slow way down, which would mean a slow get away down to the chicane which puts Lewis in position to overtake him into the second chicane.
Going off that escape route you pick up dust which given there’s not too many corners in this track, takes time to rub off. You also loose some tyre temps which will take some time to get back. That plus Lewis being .2 faster in sector 2 could contribute to him losing the time. Plus he didn’t lose 4s all at once.
I don’t think he was looking happy at all. Even his interviews sounded a bit down. I don’t know what he said in Italian but it looks like the boos got to him a bit.
greg-c (@greg-c)
8th September 2014, 12:29
Are we actually sure that the smiling Wolff footage was because of Nico’s error , ????
New conspiracy, even the TV director knew Rosberg was going to yield by cutting through the scenery, !!!!
Isn’t that called match fixing ????
Prarag Chopra
7th September 2014, 16:41
That move was satisfying. Take that, Rosberg. More to come!!!!
jacobf90 (@jacobf90)
7th September 2014, 16:41
I remember specifically looking at Hamilton’s times in his race simulation during practice & comparing them with Rosbergs. Rosberg was lapping in 1:29s & 1:30s whereas Lewis was in the 28s & 29s never once dropped into the 30s. I wasn’t surprised after Lewis made his pit stop & was on the hard tyre that he started to draw Nico in. Obviously we know they share data so both drivers knew the situation so the pressure was Nico, I think that, & when Nico saw Lewis coming he did crack. Nothing controversial about that.
manu
8th September 2014, 9:14
The thing is Lewis did only 3 or so laps in P2 in his long runs, so I’m not sure it would have been enough data for Nico to look at. Secondly, given Nico didn’t have P3 he couldn’t really apply anything he may have learned until the race. Third, maybe Lewis kept some things until qualifying, especially in sector 2.
jacobf90 (@jacobf90)
9th September 2014, 10:57
The race simulation Hamilton did was at the beginning of P3. A 10 lap race sim; he set his fastest lap on the last lap of the sim putting in a 1:27.9, the rest 1:28’s & 29’s compared to Nico’s race sim of high 1:29’s & 30’s – admittedly done during P2 but conditions were similar & Monza is an active track so would have already been well rubbered in before P1.
manu
9th September 2014, 16:09
He also did a short long run stint in P2 when he came out late, at that point he was about .3 faster than Nico on his long run.
matt
7th September 2014, 17:37
keith,why the misleading headline,,,where does lewis say he believed nico would crack under pressure.