Lewis Hamilton acknowledged that he was fortunate to extend his lead in the Formula One drivers' championship despite putting in one of his "worst performances" in finishing sixth at Sunday's Hungarian Grand Prix.
The double world champion endured a miserable afternoon at the Hungaroring as he dropped to fourth at the first corner in his Mercedes-GP following a poor start from pole position. He then ran wide at Turn 6 to drop to 10th, and a collision with Daniel Ricciardo's Red Bull Racing car later in the race dropped him to 12th as he was penalised by race stewards for the contact.
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He recovered to finish sixth, two places ahead of Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg, who was on target for second until he received a puncture following contact with Ricciardo.
“Today was weird,” Hamilton said. “Do I deserve any points? I didn’t give up and drove as hard as I could.
“To come away from one of the worst performances I’ve put in a long, long time ... it shows we are human.”
Hamilton had looked superb in qualifying as he took pole by half-a-second, and he said he was puzzled by what had gone wrong in the race.
“I was all over the place,” he said. “I don’t have any words to explain what happened today. It was a really bad performance from myself.
“I pushed and never gave up, but when I had two different choices I chose the wrong one every time.”
It was a miserable day for Mercedes as for the first time since the Brazilian Grand Prix in November 2013 – 29 races ago – the team did not have a car on the podium.
Rosberg, who had looked set to make inroads into Hamilton’s title lead, said the afternoon was a missed opportunity.
“It is the sort of day I need to make the most of it against Lewis and it didn’t work out,” he said.
The German is 21 points behind his teammate with nine races of the season left, and he said: “I need to just keep going. It was close.
“This is half time in the season, but with tiny differences I could have had the lead at half time.
“Could, should, would, whatever. I have a good chance to pass Lewis in the championship at some point soon.”
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