Hamilton: I wouldn’t get away with two moves like Vettel

Lewis Hamilton says he is at a loss to understand the inconsistencies surrounding making two defensive manoeuvres, as he felt Sebastian Vettel did during the Formula 1 Russian Grand Prix.

Title rivals Hamilton and Vettel ran wheel-to-wheel in last weekend’s race at Sochi, with the Briton ultimately coming out on top to pass the Ferrari driver at Turn 4, having avoided a collision when Vettel shut the door at Turn 2.

Hamilton immediately opened his team radio feed to call out Vettel's "two moves" for being illegal but the Russian GP stewards took no further action following an initial investigation.

Speaking in the build-up to this weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix, Hamilton admitted he is still frustrated about the decision and inferred certain drivers get away with particular incidents while others do not.

“The same rules are not always applied to the same things,” Hamilton said. “As far as I am aware, when I drive down the straight I’m not allowed to move twice - but there are drivers that do move twice and nothing happens to them.

“Maybe there are some drivers that moved twice and then something does happen to them. I was really surprised when I watched the replay because it was a clear two moves.

“But when you are doing 200mph things happen so fast. I thought we were going to crash. I thought at that moment the win might be going and I might be going up in the air.

“I was really surprised that when I pulled out of it I managed to keep the car in one piece and we made it to the second corner and it actually ended up being awesome racing.”

Hamilton dismissed the suggestion that anger over Vettel’s driving had fuelled his determination to pass, adding his frustration over initially losing a place to his main championship rival during the pitstop phase was the more likely factor.

“Honestly I don’t hold anger in the car,” he explained. “I mean that’s not true, when I came out third I was relatively peeved off that I’d done all of this work and somehow the strategy didn’t go right and I was definitely frustrated at that.

“So if anything it was that anger that propelled me to want to get back past. Being in third I knew that I’d be losing several points to Sebastian, which through my driving wasn’t supposed to happen so I was very eager to get by.

“It didn’t happen that time so I did it next time but that manoeuvre he did didn’t make me more aggressive to then fight the next corner.”