“Up until that last lap, everything was relatively smooth sailing,” said Hamilton. “The tyres felt great. Valtteri was really pushing, incredibly hard. I was doing some management of that tyre. He looked like he wasn’t doing any.

“But I heard that his tyre went and I was just looking at mine and everything seemed fine. The car was still turning, with no problems. So I’m thinking: ‘Maybe it’s okay’.

“Those last few laps, I started to back off and then just down the straight it deflated and I just noticed the shape just shift a little bit. And that was definitely a heart in the mouth kind of feeling because I wasn’t quite sure if it had gone down. I hit the breaks, you could see, obviously, the tyre was falling off the rim.

“Just driving it, trying to keep the speed up, because sometimes it can break off and break the wing. Oh my god I was just praying to get it round and not be too slow. I nearly didn’t get round the last two corners, but that god we did. I really owe it to the team.

“I think ultimately, maybe we should have stopped, towards the end once we saw the delaminations.”

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