Hamilton Attacks ‘joke’ Stewards at BetLM

Hamilton Attacks ‘joke’ Stewards

Lewis Hamil­ton launched a furi­ous attack on stew­ards after twice being penalised for inci­dents dur­ing his race to sixth place in Monaco.

“It’s an absolute frickin’ joke,” he said. “I’ve been to see the stew­ards five times out of six this season.”

Asked why that was the case, he replied appar­ently in jest: “Maybe it’s because I’m black. That’s what Ali G says.”

McLaren dri­ver Hamil­ton later vis­ited stew­ards to explain his com­ments and will not be charged with disrepute.

“They said at the end that they would make sure other peo­ple in the FIA under­stand,” stated Hamil­ton, the 2008 world champion.

“They said that for any­body who has heard it and mis­un­der­stood, that they’ll clar­ify it with them and it won’t go any fur­ther than the meeting room.

“But what I said was a bit of a joke, which wasn’t funny at the time.

“I made them aware that when emo­tions are high, and it’s very intense at the end of those kind of races, you don’t always say the right thing, and the joke didn’t come at the most appropriate time.

“So I went there, made that clear to them, we’ve made our peace. They accepted my expla­na­tion, they under­stood. They said ‘We’ve all com­peted before and we under­stand the pas­sion, where you are com­ing from’, and we all shook hands afterwards.

“The week­end was tough, I feel like I’ve had every­thing thrown at me, and I’ve man­aged to catch it and deal with it the best I could.”

Hamil­ton received a drive-through penalty for a brush with Ferrari’s Felipe Massa, and was later penalised 20 sec­onds for a late tan­gle with Pas­tor Mal­don­ado of Williams — a penalty which did not affect the McLaren man’s fin­ish­ing position.

Imme­di­ately after the race, Hamil­ton said: “Massa held me up in qual­i­fy­ing, I got the penalty. He turned in to me [dur­ing the race], I got the penalty. These dri­vers are ridicu­lous. It’s stupid.”

A heated Hamil­ton told BBC Sport that he felt vic­timised by events at recent races and com­plained that he had done his best to pro­vide enter­tain­ment by going for his over­tak­ing opportunities.

“Peo­ple want to see rac­ing,” the Eng­lish­man said. “But you get done try­ing to put on a show, try­ing to make a move. Fair play, if I feel I’ve gone too late I’d hold my hand up to admit I’ve caused an inci­dent. But it’s not the case.

“I’ll just try and keep my mouth shut and try to enjoy the rest of the season.

“It’s not too late [to win the world cham­pi­onship] but it’s not look­ing great. I gave my all today and the team did a great job. It’s character-testing, whether it’s right or wrong. I’m going to go chill, do some jet-skiing, and try to stay out of trouble.”

BBC F1 co-commentator David Coulthard said that it is some­times dif­fi­cult for dri­vers to con­trol their emo­tions in the imme­di­ate after­math of a race.

“Dri­ving rac­ing cars is a very frus­trat­ing thing at times because you only see your world through the lit­tle aper­ture in your hel­met, with­out the ben­e­fit of video replays,” Coulthard commented.

“When Lewis has had the oppor­tu­nity to look through the race, I’m sure he might have a slightly dif­fer­ent view on thing.

“But they are inter­viewed when they have just been dri­ving a car for one hour and 40 min­utes around one of the most chal­leng­ing tracks in the world. He’s com­ing off a mas­sive adrenaline high.”

Massa, who crashed out in his Fer­rari in the tun­nel moments after Hamil­ton had attempted to dive down the inside at the Loews Hair­pin, called for the sport’s author­i­ties to crack down on Hamilton’s aggres­sive driving style.

“What he did today was unbe­liev­able. Not just with me, but with other dri­vers as well,” Massa said.

“I think he needs to be penalised again, and in a good way, oth­er­wise he doesn’t learn. They [the FIA] need to think about some­thing for him, or he will not learn.”

The McLaren dri­ver now trails Red Bull’s cham­pi­onship leader Sebas­t­ian Vet­tel, the win­ner in Monaco, by 58 points.

McLaren team prin­ci­pal Mar­tin Whit­marsh acknowl­edged that Hamil­ton had endured a frus­trat­ing afternoon.

“Imme­di­ately after the race Lewis was very down, and dur­ing a post-race TV inter­view he made a poor joke about his penal­ties that ref­er­enced Ali G,” Whit­marsh commented.

“How­ever, I’m pleased to say that he chose to return to the track a lit­tle while later to speak to the stew­ards about the joke. They accepted his explanation.

“I guess the real­ity is that, if you start any­where other than at the front of the grid here in Monte Carlo, you’re always going to run the risk of get­ting involved in inci­dents — espe­cially if, like Lewis, you’re a force­ful dri­ver who never, ever, gives up.

“But that’s Lewis. That’s why he’s such a fan­tas­tic dri­ver — and that’s why watch­ing him race is so thrilling. So, yes, he’s dis­ap­pointed, because he’s been seri­ously quick all week­end here, but that’s Monte-Carlo; that’s rac­ing; that’s life.”

BBC Sport’s F1 com­men­ta­tor Mar­tin Brun­dle said Hamil­ton might have to adjust his think­ing to stop frus­tra­tion get­ting the bet­ter of him.

“The prob­lem with Lewis is that it’s always someone’s fault,” Brun­dle said. “You won­der if he needs a bit of a mind­set change on that.

“To make the over­takes as he does you’ve got to be pretty adven­tur­ous. Lewis had to take some risks today, and he’s been so unlucky all week­end. There was some frus­tra­tion in his dri­ving — but it can’t always be the other guy’s fault.”

Related Posts:

• Rubens Unhappy with Monaco DRS Call
• Gene: Alonso Is Just Bet­ter Than Massa
• Massa: Hamil­ton Needs to Learn a Lesson
• Hamil­ton Angered by Toro Rosso
• Fad­ing Title Hopes Worry Ferrari

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•