"The physical misjudgment was quite eye-opening" - Lewis Hamilton's crash with George Russell analyzed by F1 pundit

F1 pundit Mark Hughes feels that Lewis Hamilton's misjudgment in his clash with Mercedes teammate George Russell was 'quite eye-opening'. The seven-time world champion made a great getaway and was racing alongside his teammate and Max Verstappen for the race lead going into turn 1.

Starting on the soft tires, Hamilton had more grip than the two drivers ahead of him who were starting on the medium and made a late lunch into Turn 1 to take advantage of his softer rubber.

However, he turned in too quickly and took himself out of the race after colliding with Russell and damaging his car. While appearing on The Race podcast, Hughes pointed out that Lewis Hamilton's mistakes have become quite frequent and said:

"I guess so but I still think that it showed a lack of judgment from Lewis Hamilton. Yeah, obviously, he was trying for the lead, using the soft tires but the physical misjudgment was quite eye-opening."

"It reminded me of a similar incident with Piastri in Monza a little bit earlier in the season. So it's a recently developed habit that he needs to get out of pretty quickly."

Lewis Hamilton analyzes Qatar GP incident with George Russell

The Mercedes driver pointed out that he was disappointed by the fact that the team could not utilize and score the maximum amount of points at the Qatar GP owing to the accident.

As per F1.com, Lewis Hamilton said:

"It was a big opportunity to get some good points for the team and in the heat of the moment, I didn’t really understand what happened. I felt the tap from behind but I don’t think George had anywhere to go. It was a really unfortunate situation and I feel really sorry for the entire team."

"Massive apologies to everyone back at Brackley and Brixworth and I take full responsibility. Everybody is working incredibly hard so it’s massively gutting to have a result like this. The positives are that the pace of the car was strong across the weekend. George was also able to do a good job of getting back through to score some important points."

It will be fascinating to see how Toto Wolff deals with the incident involving his two drivers. Since their partnership started in 2022, this was the first time both drivers collided in a race which had massive ramifications on their results.