Hamilton sticks to point of view: "But I have a huge amount of respect for Albon"

Lewis Hamilton has looked back on his incident with Alexander Albon last week at the Red Bull Ring in the run-up to the Styrian Grand Prix. The Mercedes driver is disappointed with the incident, but insists it was a race incident. Hamilton continues to talk about his Red Bull Racing competitor with great respect.

"Firstly, I have a huge amount of respect for Alex", Hamilton is quoted by Racefans.net ahead of the second Grand Prix in Austria. The six-time world champion thinks it's great what level the British Thai is able to put on the mat. “I think he’s a super-talented young man and I don’t have any bad blood or bad feelings towards him whatsoever."

Hamilton about touch

Hamilton was given a five-second time penalty after the incident on the Red Bull Ring last week, which caused him to fall off the podium. Albon's race failed completely after a spin in the fourth corner. "I think it’s unfortunate that we collided and I wouldn’t want to ever collide with anybody. I did think it was unfortunate. But I have to respect the decision that the stewards ended up taking. There’s nothing you can say otherwise about it", he is sporty.

Still, the 35-year-old Briton's stance remains the touché with Albon eleven laps before the flag fell was a race incident. “I did apologise, before I’d seen the incident I apologised to Alex in an interview, just because in the heat of the moment you don’t always have the viewpoints of everything. I didn’t want to jump to conclusions. Obviously I then went to watch the replay and I think he knew it was a racing incident as I said", concludes Hamilton.