In theory what overboost said is right, in practice clearly doesnt work as I mentioned above. That said I dont think he would end up 10 laps down. It would be around 6 as the lap record is only 146mph average speed and that was in the days of low fuel.
Basically, Lewis was screwed whichever way he handled the situation and I dont feel he did anything wrong before, during or after the incident.
It took Lewis 2 minutes to get to the pits after the collision. But the tire carcass looked to keep shape for about 90 seconds of that, at the speed Lewis was going. In that last 30 seconds, as the tire lost all form, you can see the shredded tire and its not hard to imagine how much damage was done in that last 30 seconds before Lewis got to the pits. If he had taken 30 or 40 seconds longer he would still have been out on the lead lap - the question is would the damage have been limited enough to give him time to get back into the points? That question can never be accurately answered. It's fair ro assume that going slower and arriving say 30 seconds later would have left his car more intact/competitive. He would then have come out say 20 seconds ahead of the leaders (on track which would be say 90 seconds behind them on the lap), but with fresh tires. He would then have had 42 laps to make up ground. Given that, at the end of the race, 7th to 10th were a minute behind the leader, then if Lewis could make up 30 odd seconds over 42 laps he could have targeted some points at least - even without a safety car. Brundle's instinct was for Lewis to slow down a bit, and whilst we don't know how much him slowing down a little might have saved his floor, for sure it would have saved it to some degree.
