Hamilton: I had pace to challenge Max at Zandvoort

ZANDVOORT, Netherlands — Lewis Hamilton believes he had the race pace to challenge Max Verstappen at the Dutch Grand Prix, but missed out on his chance due to a subpar qualifying performance and mistimed strategy calls.

Hamilton finished sixth at Zandvoort despite dropping to last place in the opening laps of the race when his Mercedes pit wall were slow to initiate a switch to wet weather tyres.

In his fight back through the field, Hamilton overtook the McLaren of Lando Norris and was challenging the Ferrari of Carlos Sainz in the closing stages of the race.

Hamilton found himself in traffic for a large part of the race, making it difficult to compare performance with Verstappen who led the vast majority of the 72 laps. But before a heavy rain shower hit the track on lap 60, Hamilton was lapping within a few tenths of the race leader on similar-age soft tyres.

“Today I had the pace, in those conditions if we made the right [strategy] calls, I could have challenged the top two,” he told Sky Sports. “We would have challenged Max, particularly when we got to the dry pace-wise we weren’t terribly far off.

“I’m not saying we would have beat them, but I think we would have been happy. It’s still nice if you think that way.”

Hamilton started the Dutch Grand Prix in 13th place after Yuki Tsunoda blocked him from taking the dry line on his fastest lap in qualifying, costing him the crucial tenth of a second he needed to progress to Q3.

Hamilton said Sunday’s result had left him satisfied with his weekend’s work.

“Yeah, I feel like today was redemption in a sense that it was terrible yesterday and I’ve managed to dial the car in a bit better today,” he said. “I overtook a bunch of people and to start 13th, I was dead last at one time, so to get back up to sixth, I’m happy with that.”

Source: www.espn.com