Lewis Hamilton gave some insight into his bizarre final laps in Singapore during which he backed off by over half a minute after his brakes failed.
The Ferrari driver began experiencing problems with his brakes from the 59th lap out of 62. He initially lost over three seconds per lap.
However the situation took a turn for the worse when Hamilton’s front-left disc appeared to fail as he approached the first corner on the penultimate lap. He lost sixth place to team mate Charles Leclerc at that point.
Hamilton still had over 40 seconds in hand over his next-closest pursuer, Fernando Alonso. Ferrari race engineer Ricardo Adami advised Hamilton to slow down to help his brakes recover, and he duly backed off by around 33 seconds compared to his previous pace.
At the beginning of the final lap, Hamilton continued to limit his pace. He also left the track at several points around the circuit.
As Alonso drew nearer, Hamilton increased his pace and drove the final sector much closer to ordinary racing speeds. That proved enough for him to beat Alonso to the finish line.
After the race Hamilton said slowing his pace did marginally improve his braking performance, despite the failure on the front-left.
“At the end I was catching Kimi [Antonelli] and then the brakes gave up,” he told the official Formula 1 channel. “You saw the spark come out of the left-front and then I just had to back off to cool them down.
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“When I cooled them down they came back a little bit, but [they were] still not fully back there.”
Although Hamilton got to the line before Alonso, the stewards penalised him five seconds after the race for his track limits infringements. That dropped the Ferrari into eighth place behind the Aston Martin.
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