Hamilton offers explanation after crashing out of points in Dutch GP

Lewis Hamilton only made it a third of the way into Sunday’s Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort, with the seven-time World Champion dramatically crashing out.

Hamilton was negotiating the Turn 3 banking on Lap 23 of 72 when he put a wheel on the slippery white line – amid light drops of rain – and lost control of his Ferrari.

After sliding into the wall at the exit and causing significant front-end damage, Hamilton parked up, apologised over the radio and headed back to the paddock with his helmet still on.

“It’s a driver error, but when there are drops of rain you do find painted surfaces become slippery first,” commented ex-F1 driver Jolyon Palmer during F1 TV’s coverage.

When he made it to the media pen, Hamilton himself said: “I generally felt like it was going okay. I had good pace compared to Charles [Leclerc] ahead of me and my tyres were still okay.

“The rear was getting a bit twitchy… I got to Turn 3 and had a snap and I couldn’t recover it.”

“It’s not a normal sort of thing for me to have, [to] crash out of a race. I can’t really say too much more about it.”

Ferrari went on to suffer a double DNF when Leclerc dropped out of proceedings following a clash with Mercedes rival Kimi Antonelli through the same Turn 3 section.

Hit go on the video player at the top of the page to watch Hamilton’s incident as it unfolded.