Lewis Hamilton made a failed attempt to hand eighth place back to Ferrari Formula 1 team-mate Charles Leclerc on the final lap of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Hamilton said it "won't happen again" and was apologetic to his team-mate, though Leclerc himself admitted the positions in play meant the failure to swap didn't really matter to him.
The pair had initially exchanged positions on track on lap 44 in the hope Hamilton could take advantage of his fresher medium tyres, to challenge Lando Norris, Yuki Tsunoda and Liam Lawson ahead - as Leclerc had stopped to switch to hards much earlier in the race, so was fading out of that battle.
As Hamilton, who complained about the lack of rear-end grip making life difficult for him, was unable to gain a position, he was told on the last lap on the run out of Turn 16, the last proper corner, to give the position back.
“Let Charles by, he’s one and a half [seconds] behind you,” said race engineer Riccardo Adami. “This is the last lap. And behind [him] is [Isack] Hadjar [by] two seconds, Charles 1.5 behind, let him by.”
Hamilton didn’t comment on the message but did back off significantly as he approached the line, dropping from just over 340km/h to approximately 184km/h by the time he crossed the line. However, this wasn’t enough for the flat-out Leclerc to get ahead and he crossed the line 0.518s behind. It's unclear whether this was the result of confusion as to where the finish line is given that it is separate from the start line and Leclerc was ahead by the time they got to the latter.
Neither driver commented on the situation on the slowdown lap, although both talked about other topics, with Hamilton discussing pace and Leclerc enquiring about whether former team-mate Carlos Sainz had finished on the podium. Hamilton did make an indistinguishable sound just after crossing the line that was possibly in recognition of the fact he’d not backed off enough.
Speaking after the race, Hamilton said: "Firstly...obviously I was quicker [in that moment of the race] but Charles was gracious to let me by. At the end I got the message really late on, and I was like zoned in on the car in front of me, even though there was like 0.0001% chance of passing, I was still hopeful maybe.
"And basically I did lift on the straight, and did actually brake, but he missed it by like four tenths.
"That was just a misjudgment by myself. I'll apologise to Charles. At the end of the day that's [only] eighth and ninth."
Leclerc objected to the situation being described as 'confusion' over the second swap, describing it as "very clear", but added: "I really don't care. For an eighth place, I don't think that this should be the talking point.
"Unfortunately, we have been very slow all weekend, and that's what we should focus on. P8 and P9, or P9 and P8, is not something that really interests me. It's fine."
Prodded on it further, he said: "I mean, there are rules that we know we've got to work with. And today maybe those rules were not respected.
"But, again, P8-P9, P9-P8, that's more going forward obviously, if we are fighting for sexier positions, which I hope it would be the case, then I hope that we will work in a different way.
"But on a day like that, honestly, I don't really mind."
When told Leclerc wasn't really bothered, Hamilton said: "Yeah, but [still] that won't happen again."
