Formula One news

Hamilton happy, explains three-stop plan

Lewis Hamilton was a happy driver after a hard fought race and a three-stop strategy enabled him to split Ferrari's dominance to take second place in the Turkish Grand Prix.

"I'm thrilled to have come second having started third, but with the strategy we were on I was a bit disappointed because Heikki was able to out-qualify me with a bit more fuel," Hamilton said. "Today we started on the harder tyre and we knew it would be tough to challenge the Ferraris and we were just hoping for some points and to be in the top five would be great. But the balance was great and on the hard tyres I was able to keep up with Felipe and even pass him. At the end the soft tyre was definitely worse and it was difficult. But I'm much happier."

Hamilton explained why he ran a three stop race, "The reason we went with a three-stopper was due to Bridgestone being concerned that the tyre might fail for us like it did last year, so we had to do a three-stop as the safest route to go, unfortunately for us that put us in a weaker position to fight to win the race."

Hamilton's second place moves him two points closer to championship leader Kimi Raikkonen on 28 points, seven points behind.

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