‘It brings memories back’: Lewis Hamilton hints at Abu Dhabi but says safety car rules were followed at Monza

Lewis Hamilton says the safety car rules were correctly applied at the end of the Italian Grand Prix but did give a pointer towards Abu Dhabi last year as he said “only one time in the history of the sport that they haven’t done the rule.”

Sunday’s race at Monza was halted with five laps to go after Daniel Ricciardo stopped on the side of the track reporting an engine failure, triggering a safety car and the grid pitting for new tyres.

Yet once the car was eventually cleared from the track, there was not enough time to restart the race under green flag conditions, to the frustration of second-placed Charles Leclerc and the Ferrari fanbase as they wanted a late sprint to the line with winner Max Verstappen.

Hamilton, who finished fifth, was asked about the finale and referenced how he lost last year’s World Championship infamously in the winner-takes-all last race in Abu Dhabi, when the safety car went in a lap early which opened the door for Verstappen to pass him and claim the title.

“It always brings memories back, that is the rule that it should be, right,” Hamilton told Sky F1, when asked about the race ending behind the safety car.

“So only one time, in the history of the sport, that they haven’t done the rule.”

The seven-time world champion believed that the rules were followed this time as did Mercedes boss Toto Wolff - who said race director Niels Wittich had done his job.

Last year’s race director Michael Masi was sacked by the FIA in February after the controversial ending to last year’s enthralling Championship battle.

“The race director’s corner has been under critics but this time they followed the rules,” he said.

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“Maybe they could’ve done it a lap earlier or let George through - but they followed the rules and accepted the race ends under safety car. This is how it should be.”

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner insisted the race should have restarted under green flag conditions, believing there was “more than enough” time to get the race going again.

“We don’t want to win a race under a safety car,” Horner told Sky F1.

“And that’s something that we’ve talked about for many, many years that they should finish racing. There was enough time to get that race going. I think they (safety car) picked up the wrong car, they picked up George Russell.

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“We had the faster car, and we would have liked to have won the race on the track, not behind the safety car. So we share the disappointment of all the fans because it took away a grandstand finish. I’d just like to see the race play out. And, you know, I think we would have won it if there hadn’t been a safety car, we had enough pace in hand on the one stop that we’d adopted.

“We’d saved a new set of tyres, we had a new set versus Charles’s scrubbed set. But it was also for a grandstand finish that we didn’t get to see. And I think it goes against the principles of what we’ve discussed previously. So the biggest losers today, unfortunately, were the fans. But we need to look quickly to address it.

“We need to go through the details of it. But for me, there was more than enough time to get that race going again. And again with a car that wasn’t in a barrier. It was parked on the side of the track.”

Verstappen now has a 116-point lead from Leclerc in the World Championship with six races to go and could win the title in Singapore in three weeks’ time.