Lewis Hamilton explains ‘I told you so’ message to Mercedes at Monaco GP

Lewis Hamilton has refuted suggestions he was unhappy with Mercedes’ tire call at the start of the Monaco Grand Prix, saying his ‘I told you so’ message was simply that there would be a incident in the first lap.

Lewis Hamilton was seventh on the grid at the Monte Carlo street circuit, seventh when the red flag came out for Sergio Perez’s horror crash, seventh on the restart and seventh at the end of the ’78 Grand Prix turns.

Lewis Hamilton “wanted” to start on the hard Pirelli

Additional reporting by Sam Cooper

But even though the race was uneventful from lap 3 to the restart to lap 78 to the finish, lap 1 was anything but.

Perez raised red flags when he was clipped by Kevin Magnussen, throwing him nose-first into the Armco barrier with such force that the barrier was dented.

By the time Pérez’s Red Bull stopped, it had suffered serious damage to all four corners, but fortunately he was unhurt.

Magnussen and teammate Nico Hulkenberg were also out of the race while further back in the peloton, Esteban Ocon lunged at Pierre Gasly and effectively ended his race.

Hamilton addressed an “I told you guys” to his Mercedes race engineer, Peter Bonnington, as he returned to the pit lane under a red flag.

This meant a free tire change for each of the remaining drivers, with Hamilton swapping his hard Pirellis for a set of mediums during his mandatory tire change.

This led to speculation that the Briton was unhappy about starting on the hard tires given he potentially had 75 laps to go on the mediums.

Hamilton overruled this in his post-race press briefing, revealing that he “wanted” to start on the hard tyres.

“Well, I think it was going to be long anyway, whatever tire I used, but I wanted to start on the hard,” he told media outlets including PlanetF1.com.

“I felt like something was going to happen at the start of the race and normally that would create an opportunity to pass to the hard guys and go all the way.

“But I think in the end everyone drove so slowly that every tire made it all the way to the end, so it didn’t make any difference.”

Key takeaways from the Monaco Grand Prix

👉 Data from the Monaco GP: Mercedes’ “survival” strategy conditioned by Alonso’s traffic denies the fight for victory

👉 Monaco Grand Prix conclusions: Charles Leclerc breakthrough, Kevin Magnussen ban and more

His team boss, Toto Wolff, also weighed in on this decision to start with hard tires, as the accident, which gave everyone a free pit stop, negated arguably the biggest – perhaps be the only one – strategic game in Monaco.

“By the time the accident happened, it was clear that we were really behind,” Wolff lamented. “Fundamentally, I don’t think there’s much we can change in Monaco. You end up pretty much where you start.

Hamilton did just that, from P7 to P7, while George Russell started fifth and finished fifth.

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