Hamilton explains safety car restart 'shuffle' that sparked Baku clash
Lewis Hamilton says he 'had to shuffle it' during the second safety car restart in order to catch out Sebastian Vettel but says the following clash took him by surprise in Baku.
After an initial safety car getaway went off without an issue, Hamilton found himself starting the race again a couple of laps later due to a second safety car which sparked the major controversy when Vettel struck the back of Hamilton's Mercedes after the Briton slowed on the exit of Turn 15 ahead of the restart.
Vettel angrily proceeded to pull alongside Hamilton and bash wheels deliberately with his title rival, prompting stewards to hand him a 10-second stop-go penalty that would drop him to an eventual fourth place at the finish.
Vettel, who has come under a fresh FIA investigation which will be held next week, accused Hamilton of brake-checking him at the second restart but Hamilton gave a different version which he had hoped to catch out his rival - but says he did the same thing at turn 15 in both safety car restarts.
"There was a couple of different tactics in terms of when I decide to push, but that's after Turn 16," Hamilton said. "It's either Turn 16 or later on. At that point I had to shuffle it as I couldn't do the same thing as I'd done before, but a turn 15 I did exactly the same, I was just trying to let the Safety Car go.
"[When] the Safety Car keeps coming out your first trick won't necessarily work against a four-time world champion so I had to come up with lots of different ways in order to make sure I came into Turn 1 in the lead.
"But by Turn 7 I'm told the Safety Car is going to come in, I'm only allowed a ten car-length gap between myself and the Safety Car whilst the lights are on. Going into Turn 15 I'm with around that gap and when I'm going down the hill I can see the lights switch off and at that point I don't need to accelerate and speed up to keep that gap.
"So I kept a consistent pace, a consistent deceleration down to the apex and just didn't speed up. I did that the first time and did that the second time. It was just the second time I got a nudge."
