Honda: Hamilton was lucky in some of the races of the 2021 season

Masashi Yamamoto, Honda's F1 program director, said Lewis Hamilton was lucky in some of the races of 2021.

He gave the example of the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, when Hamilton rushed off the track in wet conditions and the Mercedes driver reversed and returned to the race again, coincidentally, his accident occurred a few seconds before Walteri Bottas and George Russell collided at high speed, the race showed a red flag, Hamilton was able to minimize the loss, and then Hamilton overtook one by one and finally crossed the line in the second position.

Yamamoto said: "Lewis made a mistake and rushed off the track, wasting a lot of time, however, red flag gave him the opportunity to enter the station to fix. Lewis has had a couple of strokes of luck this season, and that's one of them. ”

Hamilton and Verstappen's biggest accident of the season came at Silverstone, and their first-lap crash was one of the most dramatic moments of the season, with the seven-time world champion scoring 10 seconds of penalty time but ultimately winning the race, greatly narrowing the gap with the Red Bull drivers in the drivers' standings.

Yamamoto believes that Silverstone's crash was a major factor in the championship battle into the final lap of the final race.

Yamamoto explains: "I think the events at the British Grand Prix are one of the reasons they've been so close all season. At Silverstone, we and Mercedes are different in terms of pace in the first, second and third stages, in other words, we have a different strategy to win time. Mercedes ran faster in the first stage and we ran faster in the third stage. Although Hamilton struggled to move forward from the start, if Max could hold out until Turn 9, he would be able to run faster. However, they collided, Max rushed out of the track and hit the wall, the car was damaged, we lost an engine and had to change the strategy for the whole season. ”