Lewis Hamilton believes he didn’t use the best racing strategy for the Formula One Turkish Grand Prix, and that he could have pitted earlier or raced to the finish line without stopping.

The Mercedes driver had moved from 11th on the grid to third after receiving a 10-place grid penalty for an engine change prior to the race, and was the last of the drivers to pit for new intermediates on lap 50, while Esteban Ocon was the only driver who did not pit for the entire race.

Hamilton’s performance began to deteriorate owing to significant wear on the intermediate tyres, and Mercedes brought him in with eight laps remaining, dropping him to fifth place behind Red Bull’s Sergio Perez and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.

On fresh intermediate tyres, the majority of drivers experienced a graining phase, losing performance approximately two to three laps into the stint, causing Hamilton to fall behind Leclerc and come under pressure from Pierre Gasly behind.

While Hamilton was able to hold on to fifth place at the finish line, he expressed his disappointment with his racing strategy over his Mercedes team radio during his last stint.

After the race, Hamilton stated that Mercedes should have either pitted him earlier and in sequence with the other drivers he was racing with, or told him to preserve tyre life in order to finish the race without pitting.

“The tyres are bald, so you don’t know how far they’re going to go,” Hamilton told Sky Sports F1.

“And so there is definitely the worry of the life of the tyre. But also I wasn’t really that fast at the end there. I was struggling at low grip. Not really sure why.

“Then all of a sudden, I have not such bad place. But I was losing performance to the guys behind.

“I think probably in hindsight, I should have either stayed out or come in much earlier.

“Because when you come in with eight laps to go, you don’t have time to go through the graining phase of tyre on a drying track. So then I went through this whole sliding phase where I nearly lost four positions. A bit frustrating, but it is what it is.

“It felt good to be in third and it was like, ‘if I can just hold on to this, this is a great result from 11th’. Fifth is worse but it could be worse.”

Toto Wolff, Mercedes team leader, said that the team’s strategy predicted Hamilton would have been caught by Perez and Leclerc if he had stayed out until the end, avoiding the higher risk of tyre failure due to heavy wear.

“Yeah, DNFing and you are losing all the points, that is obviously catastrophic,” Wolff told Sky Sports F1.

“He would have been caught up by Perez and Leclerc in any case if we would have tried to stay out so that that would not have worked.

“The conservative play, pitting early on track behind Perez and Leclerc and trying to overtake probably the best, but the probability was not the right thing to do.”

With Red Bull’s Max Verstappen coming second to Valtteri Bottas in the Turkish GP, the Red Bull driver has regained the world championship lead by six points over Hamilton.

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