Lewis Hamilton “lucky to make it round” after Spanish GP brake failure

Ferrari driver Lewis Hamilton says he was "lucky to make it round" to the garage after suffering a brake failure in the opening stages of Madrid's Spanish GP.

Hamilton had been battling Max Verstappen for third when his brake pedal started going long during the first couple of laps. Hamilton and Ferrari initially held some hope that the Briton could continue after changing a few settings as directed by his engineers. But he continued to miss braking points shortly afterwards, including a brush with the wall, ending hopes of continuing.

"It was really unexpected," Hamilton said. "I was braking for Turn 5 on the first lap and the car was stopping normally. And then the pedal took a step, and I ended up carrying loads of speed into the corner because it didn't stop as well. And then it came back fine in the next corner, and I thought we'd be fine.

"And then all of a sudden the pedal just went fully to the end, so I was lucky to make it round."

The Madring's wall-lined 5.4km circuit is one of the last tracks on the calendar to coast around with dodgy brakes, so Ferrari quickly called the seven-time world champion into the pits to retire the car.

"We tried to fix it from the pit wall and then it happened again a couple of corners later," said team principal Fred Vasseur. "Staying on track made no sense in a crazy race. We didn't want to take any risk."

Vasseur said he felt Hamilton had the pace to fight up front, but because the 57-lap race was such a procession dominated by track position, he was under no illusions of a much better result than third.

"When you see the pace of Charles, you can imagine that we had the pace to fight with everybody," he said. "It's more a matter of track position. Honestly, it was mega difficult to overtake today.

"I'm more focused on my cars, but I don't know who overtook during the race. I think that in this situation it's just about track position. To fight is not the word, it's more a matter of position."