Hamilton explains “you need to listen to me” radio criticism
During the early phase of the race at the Marina Bay Street Circuit, Hamilton struggled to stick with the leading trio as he couldn’t get temperature into his intermediate tyres.
Hamilton then complained over team radio: “I told you about these tyres, in the future you need to listen to me, no grip”.
There were some bizarre suggestions that Hamilton wanted full wets instead of intermediates but after the race, the Mercedes driver cleared up why he wasn’t with the team’s decisions in Singapore.
“No, I wanted to start with scrubbed [intermediates] and I wanted to go to the soft,” Hamilton explained. “It didn’t really make any difference, so who knows.”
Mercedes have struggled throughout this season with getting temperature into their tyres.
A scrubbed set - a set of tyres that has done at least one lap already - tends to warm up faster as it already has had a heat cycle put through them.
In the case of a scrubbed set of intermediates, the edges of the tyre would have been slightly worn down, allowing for better warm up.
However, Mercedes would have been concerned about how the scrubbed set of tyres would have coped with the wetter parts of the circuit and how long they could have lasted in terms of a full race distance.
“I did laps to the grid on the scrubbed set and it was better and with the new softs set it was terrible,” he added.
“It took several laps for the temperatures to come up and we can’t fire our tyres up as quick as the others for some reason, both on wets and on slicks.
“So we don’t really understand why. There’s something going on there with temperatures because on the long runs in the dry we’ve got good longevity, so maybe it’s something with that.”
Hamilton ultimately finished the race in ninth after crashing into the wall at Turn 7 before being stuck behind Sebastian Vettel in the latter stages of the race following the Safety Car.
He sits sixth in the F1 standings with five rounds to go.
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