Lewis Hamilton comments on letting George Russell pass after Mercedes team order in Miami 

Lewis Hamilton didn't make too big a deal about letting George Russell through at the Miami GP as he claimed that he has always been a team player.

The race in Miami was not Hamilton's best as he was comprehensively out-qualified by teammate George Russell. As a result, Russell was on an alternate strategy and at one moment had to get by Lewis Hamilton who was on older hard tires.

When Lewis got the call, the F1 legend told the team that Russell, “Can go by but I’m not backing off though." However, as soon as George was able to close up, Lewis let him through. Talking about the moment he let Russell pass, Lewis said,

“George [Russell] and I – he started sixth – so were in a bit of a different race, and of course, I’m a team player, I want to get the team the maximum points, so I let him by.”

Looking back at his own race, Lewis Hamilton appeared quite satisfied as he said:

“It’s been a good day, much better than yesterday [in qualifying]. Yesterday was a difficult day, to be qualified [in] 13th is not great, [and] obviously made the race much, much harder for us. The first 20 laps were a little bit difficult because we were in a DRS train."

"But after that, I was able to then start chipping away and I really enjoyed battling with all the different cars – it was great at the end to catch the Alpine and overtake a Ferrari for example.”

Lewis Hamilton happy with how the race panned out

After the race, the Mercedes driver was very happy with how everything panned out. Hamilton drew parallels with the Sprint in Baku and said:

“It’s mega, it’s mega yeah, Just to be in that position, you know – there was the Sprint race in the last race for example, where I was just going backward, and it’s like really demoralizing you’re going backward it’s really tough."

"It was great to have pace, to be seeing the cars up ahead and seeing the progress, knowing that we were going to be battling with people. I had a couple of great overtakes as well, so that’s what I live for.”

Lewis Hamilton has not won a race in F1 since his championship campaign in 2021. The Mercedes driver has not really had the car to challenge for wins and that has been a limiting factor for him over the last couple of years.