Jenson Button believes Lewis Hamilton must shoulder the blame for a massive error late in qualifying which placed him dead last for the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Hamilton, who has endured a torrid debut campaign in Ferrari red, hit a new low in wet conditions on Friday night after qualifying 20th on the grid for the first time on pure pace in his 19-year F1 career.
The 40-year-old – who has recorded some of his best-ever victories in wet conditions – could not optimise his Ferrari car and ended up 2.3 seconds slower than teammate Charles Leclerc. Yet Hamilton made a huge mistake in the final seconds of Q1.
After being hindered on his final push lap due to yellow flags, the Briton thought he crossed the line on the start-finish straight too late to start another lap, with red-lights flashing above. However, replays show that Hamilton could have actually started another push lap, as he crossed the timing line with the lights still green.
Sky F1’s Bernie Collins revealed, having listened to radio messages, that the Ferrari pit wall did tell Hamilton to continue “pushing”, but Hamilton lifted off the accelerator. Asked whether he could defend Hamilton for the error, fellow Sky F1 pundit and 2009 world champion Button replied: “No – it’s a tricky one. He’s not the first one to probably make this mistake, but the timing line is a different line to the gantry.
“You should know that because the time comes up on your dash. We all get told what our lap times are when you cross that line.”
“I guess he should know every regulation – it’s really tricky as a driver if you see a red light flash up above you, you think it's over. But the timing line is obviously before that.
“When it’s that tricky out there, so much going on… he’s lost focus on what is correct for starting the next lap.”
A deflated Hamilton, however, was unaware of the error when speaking in the media pen afterwards.
“I got yellow flags in the last corner and coming into turn 17, so I had to lift and when I came to the line there was a red,” he said.
“It was very slippery and the first set of tyres didn’t work for us and I just struggled to generate the heat in the tyres for some reason.
“It’s a shame because the guys have done such a great job and the car was feeling awesome in FP3 and I really felt like we had good place, but the rain came. There’s not a lot more to say, to be honest.”
Lando Norris secured pole position in Vegas, with Max Verstappen second and Carlos Sainz third. Norris’s McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri could only qualify fifth, with Hamilton’s teammate Charles Leclerc down in ninth.
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