The race in Budapest was red-flagged after two separate incidents o💮n the opening lap.

Valtteri Bottas hit the back of Lando Norris’ McLaren into Turn 1, spearing him into the Red Bull duo, while Lance St🐼roll crashed into Charles L𓆏eclerc, spinning Daniel Ricciardo around in the process.

With the track littered with debris and four cars already 🅠out of the race, proceedings were halted for 20 minute꧒s.

The rain🍎 had stopped when the second formation lap was underway meaning the track was drying quickly.

13 of the 14 remaining runners decided to pit before the second standing💃 start, leaving Hamilton to take to the grid by himself before swit⛄ching to slicks a lap later.

The🉐 delayed stop dropped him to 14th, before recovering to third.

Reflecti🅷ng on the decision to keep Hamilton out, Wolff told Sky Sports F1: “To be honest I think we did absolutely the ri🌊ght thing. There’s no one in the team that would have done otherwise.

“As🐲 a leading car, it’s always difficult to take the decision and if you’re the only one pitting and you come out last, and there’s the difficulty in getting out of the pits then as everybody is pitting and now it looked like we were a bit lonely there o𒁏n the grid and it played against us.

“With the sun it dried up so quickly that within a lap actually, it was dry. These things can happen, I stand absolutely by the decision to stay out a꧙nd that’s why I am fine. We could have gambled as the leading car and come in with also a disastrous outcome and then if that would have happened people would have said that we’d have made a mistake so it was the right decision.”

Hamilton felt it was dry conditions but dec▨ided to rely on the team as he thought they had more information about the weather.

“I was telling the team how the track was through the lap,” he added. “But they said the rain wওas coming at us when we got in the car, so I tho🥀ught they had other information and I saw everyone diving in.”