Lewis Hamilton would have risked 'tumbling down the order' and was heading for a disaster had he refused to pit late on at the Turkish Grand Prix, believes Formula One managing director Ross Brawn.
The seven-time world champion, who started 11th, was left incensed on team radio when a poorly-timed pit-stop pushed him out of the podium places and left him clinging on to fifth place in Istanbul.
'F***, man, why did you give up that space?' Hamilton asked over the team radio.
Lewis Hamilton was left frustrated by a poorly-timed pit-stop late on at the Turkish Grand Prix
Ross Brawn, F1's managing director, felt Hamilton was heading for a 'disaster' if he didn't pit
Hamilton had wanted to stay out throughout on his original intermediate tyres on a damp track - a tactic only employed by Alpine's Esteban Ocon. To which Hamilton said on Sunday: 'If Ocon did it, then I could do it, for sure.'
But for Brawn, with the way the race was going and the conditions on track, had Hamilton stayed 'in a bubble' and not listened to his engineers he was heading towards a 'disaster' finish.
'The driver is in a bubble,' Brawn wrote in his column on the official F1 website.
'They need to give you information, but what they can't see is all the data being fed to the pit wall.
'In Lewis' case, if he didn't box and the tyres had gone away or there had been a light rain shower, he would have tumbled down the order and that would have been a disaster.
'Once again teams were faced with a very difficult strategic decision. In these scenarios, you're trusting your judgment, experience and feel.
'As we saw with Lewis, there was a fair bit of initial resistance from within the car about pitting.'
Brawn believes that Hamilton would have 'tumbled down the order' further without a
