Lars997:

... Hearing from Hamilton after couple of rounds already that he wants to give up tells everything. The guy is not a good sportsman and I would expect him to get punished for giving up, too. Just because you are the last should not give you the option to park the car in the pit ...

Sorry Lars but this view is not well-informed.

In the previous race in Hungary, Hamilton fought back from 22nd on the grid to reach 3rd. The most determined fighters (who come back from a terrible position) are Hamilton, Alonso and Vettel IMO.

Hamilton's puncture in Spa caused the tyre carcass to damage his carbon floor. He had a huge chunk of bodywork missing. Visually to me it looked like 30cm x 20cm. Hamilton said he lost 40-50 points of downforce because of this damage.

Remember Hamilton's engine caught fire in the previous race ... Hamilton has one fewer engine than Rosberg for the whole season. So Hamilton wanted to save mileage on the Spa engine so that he could wipe out the engine deficit. There was no point driving a damaged car that could not score points. He preferred to save that engine.

In the end, his team were dumb. They made him keep going, even though he could not catch the cars in front of him. And he retired much later on. So he didn't score points and also couldn't save mileage on his engine.


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