Lewis Hamilton said he gave back third position to team-mate Valtteri Bottas in Hungary since he “needs to win the title the correct way”.
The Mercedes driver regarded a guarantee to give the Finn a chance to back past him on the last lap, after Bottas moved out of his approach to give him a chance to assault the Ferraris.
The circumstance emerged on the grounds that after the single pit stops the Mercedes drivers were shutting on the main Ferraris.
“I had a lot more pace than Valtteri but the radio didn’t work at the time so I couldn’t communicate with the team,” Hamilton said.
“I felt I had the pace to fight with the Ferraris. The radio started working and they gave Valtteri a few laps to try to catch the Ferraris which he wasn’t able to do. He was great to let me go. “My thought process was: ‘If he lets me by and I can’t pull away from him then I will just let him back.’ But I had a lot more pace.”
Hamilton’s title match Sebastian Vettel was driving yet battling with an issue with his car’s controlling. Hamilton, in the interim, was stuck behind Bottas and feeling he could go quicker.
“I don’t know whether it will come back to bite me in the backside,” he said.
“I said at the beginning of the year I want to win it the right way and it was the right way to do things.” “If he let me by and I pulled him along and we were two seconds apart it is a much easier thing to let him back,” he said. “But I was seven seconds up ahead and with the Ferraris and the team were in a difficult position. But it showed I am a man of my word and also that I am a team player. I am just as much a part of the team as anyone in it. It shows unity.
“In life, if you do good things, good things come back to you.”
