Montoya impress with Hamilton: "Probably would've had a chance to win"

Hamilton wants to give up

During the Spanish GP, Hamilton immediately faced a setback. After a collision with Kevin Magnussen, he was at the back and also had to make a pit stop. The gap to the front of the grid was huge and Hamilton wondered aloud if the team shouldn't save the engine.

''It was weird that Hamilton suggested on the radio to park that car and kind of gave up, I understand why he did that. He's driving at the back and the car wasn't competitive in the last races. It was a surprise to him how quick the car was then in the race. If he hadn't had the incident, he probably would've had a chance to win the race. He started getting excited when he got in the points and he started to drive harder and harder," said the seven-time race winner at Sky Sports.

Battle with Russell

Montoya understood Hamilton's disappointment: ''You just got hit on the first lap, you've driven a whole lap with a flat time and then your pit stop that takes a long time. At that point you are sixty or seventy seconds behind the leader and you wonder what you're going to achieve. If you look at it from Lewis' point of view I can understand that, because he is used to having cars that can win races. The team made the right call and it was impressive to see Hamilton not give up."

With that overtaking race, Hamilton also showed what makes him so good, according to the former McLaren driver. George Russell is better over one lap at the moment according to Montoya, but in the race Hamilton can still make the difference as he did in battle with Valtteri Bottas. In Monaco next weekend, however, it will all come down to that one lap again on Saturday.