Vettel though managed to hold on to the lead throughout the race and secured his second win of the season.
The Mercedes executive director, Toto Wolff, has said the team will consider team orders after defeat at the Bahrain Grand Prix on Sunday made it clear the battle for this year's Formula One world championship will be closely contested with Ferrari.
"The pit lane was really my fault so apologies to my team", Hamilton said.
After the race, Hamilton apologised to the team for the incident and in his post-race media debrief revealed his frustration at the way the Bahrain weekend unfolded. When you have a problem on the vehicle like we had in the afternoon, that would have been a situation we would have considered - to swap them - but with a Ferrari in between, we couldn't. I thought he might be at risk of a penalty.
"We don't like it at all", Wolff said when questioned.
Wolff said: "The race reminded us once again that we are in a very different competitive situation this year, racing against Ferrari, and I am confident that this is a challenge we will rise to as one team". Today, I lost a position at the start - exclusively my fault - and then you've got the time lost in the pit lane.
"You practise, and practise, and practise, and you only have 20 opportunities and when you f*** it up, man, it is painful". There's no other way of saying it. "But ultimately you set out to move forwards and do well for the team and I don't feel like I executed the way I could".
But the issue - which resulted in him stopping on track and his vehicle taken back to the Mercedes garage on a pick-up truck - meant he lost only 30 minutes of track action.
As rail woes persist, Christie mum on tunnel project he axed
Frank Lautenberg who expected to design a better deal for New Jersey, saying the time for negotiations had passed. The 109-year-old North River tunnels carry 85,000 NJ Transit and Amtrak customers to NY and back daily.
In Bahrain, the Briton recognised he could have put himself in a much better position to win.
Hamilton believes small errors are going to be the difference between winning and losing this year.
"I would have done it before the pit lane, because I think that's A-OK".
"I think we are about equal", he said.
"Valtteri's problem was pretty clear, he was struggling in the first stint and that was clear, and afterwards you just need to have the tyres in the right window and obviously with Valtteri's vehicle we weren't able to have that".
"So yes I see the point, but still it's tough when you're on pole and trying to win a race".
"You're always more intelligent afterward, what could have been". We need to find out why we didn't have the pace.
"It was just over-steering all through the race, that's why the pace was slow", Bottas lamented. Basically the whole first I was sliding, so that's why I went back.
Comments