Fresh support emerges for Lewis Hamilton despite Fernando Alonso radio fury

Fernando Alonso may have been furious, but Sam Bird says Lewis Hamilton did what every race driver would have done as he stayed on track at the Singapore Grand Prix despite his brakes failing.

Hamilton’s Singapore Grand Prix was a tale of two parts as the Ferrari began to chase down Kimi Antonelli for sixth place after a late pit stop on lap 46 for a set of soft Pirelli tyres.

‘Is that deemed dangerous? Did Lewis Hamilton do the right thing?’

Ferrari cleared Charles Leclerc out of the way and Hamilton went on a charge. Well, he did, until he didn’t.

With just a handful of laps remaining, Hamilton reported to his race engineer Riccardo Adami that he was “losing my brakes”, which was followed a short while later by, “I’ve lost my brakes, lost my left front.”

He then lost second place to Charles Leclerc, but with two laps to go, stayed out on track as he was over 30 seconds ahead of Fernando Alonso, meaning a points finish was still on the cards.

But forced to slow down as he struggled to keep his Ferrari on the track, racking up one track violation after another, Hamilton soon had Alonso on his rear wing.

The Spaniard wasn’t happy with Hamilton’s antics and launched into a sweary rant as he felt the SF-25 was unsafe.

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“I cannot believe it. I cannot f***ing believe it. I cannot f***ing believe it!” raged the Aston Martin driver. “I mean, I cannot f***ing believe it. I cannot f***ing believe it.

“Is it safe to drive with no brakes?

“Five seconds, minimum!

“For me, you cannot drive when the car is not safe, you know. Sometimes, they try to disqualify me with no mirror, and now you have no brakes, and everything is fine? I doubt it.”

Hamilton took the chequered flag in seventh place, four-tenths ahead of Alonso, but was demoted to P8 when he was given a five-second penalty for track limits.

Despite Alonso’s rant, Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur insisted the Ferrari was safe “because we adapted pace” with Hamilton driving slower.

It does, however, raise the question of whether a car can be considered safe when the brakes have failed.

Safe or not, former Formula E driver and Mercedes test driver Bird says he can’t see any driver parking the car when there’s a chance they could still finish the race.

“Into Turn 16, with a few laps to go, you just saw a load of sparks from the inside of the rim on Hamilton’s front left. It didn’t look right,” he said on the BBC Chequered Flag.

“It definitely looks like that’s a disc failure. Lewis Hamilton then didn’t have any brakes for the last couple of laps. Cue, Fernando Alonso, who in the end, eventually finished behind Lewis Hamilton. But with a lap to go, he was 40 seconds behind Lewis. Lewis was that slow on the last lap.

“I don’t think he adhered to any track limits over the course of the final lap, but had to miss all the corners because he didn’t have any brakes.

“The question is, should you continue if you’ve got no brakes? Is that deemed dangerous? Did Lewis do the right thing?

“I mean, I would continue with a lap to go. If I was in the same position, I’d continue and get across the line and let the stewards decide on what they want to do.

‘So I think that Lewis did the right thing, but I can completely see why Fernando went irate, didn’t he?”

Hamilton, meanwhile, took to social media to make his thoughts clear on Alonso’s complaints.

Posting a video on Instagram in which the ‘One Foot in the Grave’ actor repeats “I don’t believe it” again and again, he wrote: “18 years of…”

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