Lewis Hamiton’s fun weekend in Australia
Lewis Hamilton didn’t have a good weekend at the Australian GP – not as bad as last year and he should be pleased to walk away with sixth place in the end but I doubt he’ll see it that way. It seems that all is not calm in the Hamilton camp at the moment.
He started the race weekend late by arriving later than most to fuel speculation that he’s going off the rails without his father and then followed that up by getting pulled over by the Australian police for basically being a bit of a twat. He’s a world champion, he has ample opportunity to drive fast cars and pull stunts like that – why he thought that doing in front of a police van was a good idea we’ll never know. The story itself has been blown out of all proportion really though – it’s not like he’s the first driver to get caught doing something silly – I’m not sure it needed to be front page news for some of the press.
To follow that up he the messes up qualifying by being the first driver from the big four teams to not make the third part of qualifying and ended up 11th on the grid with his team mate Jenson Button sitting on the second row. At this point Hamilton is starting to see his weekend fall apart. To his credit in the race he put on a good show – he was running fourth at one point having overtaken Jenson Button – that was before Jenson’s inspired stop that effectively won him the race. After that round of tyre changes had played itself out he found himself down the order and frustrated that Button was in front.
His best moments were after his second stop which with hindsight was probably the wrong call as the other drivers stayed out. When he’d caught up – which he did spectacularly – he’d spent his new tyres and couldn’t get the traction where he really needed it to defeat the very wide Ferrari that Fernando Alonso was driving. During the race he set lap times that were nearly 3/4 s faster than Buttons and was 2s a lap faster at some stages because of the tyres but Jenson Button was out front and there was nothing Lewis could do about it and it showed with him berating the team over the radio. His comments to the press about the strategy won’t go down well with the team either.
A shunt with Mark Webber in the final laps and a limp home – I’m amazed that his car just took that knock – sealed the end of the race and just sixth place for Hamilton who watched Button pick up McLaren’s first win of the year – he’ll be wanting to get back on the wagon this weekend in Malaysia because he can’t let Button get away from him in the championship.
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2 Comments to “Lewis Hamiton’s fun weekend in Australia”
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Hamilton has every right to make the comments he did. I’d be worried if he didn’t feel passionate about it, that would mean he doesn’t care.
There was no sense in bringing him in for tyres. He would have taken Kubica and could have sailed home easily like the Ferraris.
Why McLaren decided to bring him in is beyond me. Martin Whitmarsh said in the BBC Red Button coverage that they calculated from Bahrain that you need a THREE SECOND advantage to overtake now. There was no way Lewis was going to be able to make up the time he did and overtake 2 Ferraris and a Renault. It was a completely stupid idea.
I think Lewis handled himself well in this instance. He didn’t do a Barichello and blame the team, he blamed the strategy – which was clearly wrong.
Given Lewis’ past, I think it was sensible to change him – he even struggled on his 2nd set of options.
It was a risk, but if the Ferrari’s had dived in as well, it would have worked out – he did catch them – granted he couldn’t overtaken them, but he was close…. it was worth the risk, and the type of risk we want to see the teams taking in order to make this season interesting.
But, it was stupid, because it didn’t work, but if it had worked……