McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh has defended Lewis Hamilton in the aftermath of his collision with Felipe Massa in Singapore.
Pressed on Hamilton’s run of incidents this year Whitmarsh insisted that Lewis had done a great job to put the collision and subsquent penalty behind him, and recover to fifth place.
“When things don’t go well in the team it’s natural that it’s frustrating for all of us,” he said. “I think it would have been easy, half way or a third of the way into that race to say this is very frustrating, give up or whatever, and it’s clear that Lewis didn’t do that. He did some of the best overtakings, some fantastic driving, to get back into the points. I think he should be given credit for that.
“Various things have happened, the team can take some blame, and Lewis can take some blame. I think sometimes in motor racing things just don’t go your way, and you have those runs. It’s been a tough season. We’re still going to go out there and try and win five races, and Lewis will be doing that I’m sure.
“I think the way he dealt with the frustration that he would have felt, when you’re told that you’re back in 18th/19th place on a circuit like that, it’s deeply, deeply frustrating. So to be able to deal with and perform as well as he did is extraordinary, and he’s got to have some credit for that.
“None of us is perfect. The team’s made some mistakes, we’ll make more mistakes. We don’t want to, but that’s life. We’re pretty open and honest about things, we don’t conceal them, and that allows people to take a view on it and amplify it.
“As a team we’ve got to try and get better, Lewis has got to try and get better as a race driver, but I think he drove from very difficult circumstances, five times through the pitlane, to score valuable points and a strong fifth place like that was a great drive.”
Asked whether it was time for him to sit down and have a chat with Hamilton, Whitmarsh said: “Believe or not I sit down with Lewis quite frequently, and we talk about lots of things. I think now’s the time to reflect on what happened here. I think Lewis is incredibly self-critical. He’s done a fantastic job to recover the situation, but it was a very tough race for him.
“Lewis is a great driver. There are five races, I’m sure we’ll see some absolute classic Lewis drives in the remaining five races of the year.”
Adam Cooper F1 
Whitmarsh last year on Vettel : “Sebastian is getting into a bad habit. He is a crash kid,” said Whitmarsh. “It was not what you would expect to see in Formula One. It was more reminiscent of junior formulae.”
But somehow, after all the incidents this year, Lewis is a great driver. 🙄
Oh, and he’s not a lier either. 😆
Nobody’s perfect? The team principle for Mclaren is saying nobody’s perfect? Things are worse there than I thought.
Yep, they usually are with statements like that.
I think the problem is that we have been seeing some “absolute classic Lewis drives.”
I think Felipe would agree.
Everybody knows Lewis is a super quick driver, but why does he continue to make really bad decisions. What was the purpose of the pass on Massa in qualifying? So he passed Massa nearly causing an accident and then he is right behind Alonso what is the point. Why not back off an give yourself room to have a clear lap. He just makes bad decision after bad decision.
I imagine it was to try and avoid what actually happened to him in Q3. Running out of time for a second run.
Massa is clear number 2 at Ferrari and his job now seems to be to be rear gunner for Alonso. IE try and stop competitive cars threatening Alonso. What happened in Q3 looked like Ferraris old dirty tricks coming back into play.
Massa was backed up by Alonso creating space since Button was in front of him. If Lewis wanted to get out their earlier he had the chance, just as he did in Q3. Anyone in their right mind would know that when approaching one McLaren and two Ferraris at the end of an outlap they’re not going to just let you past them. All he had to do was back off a bit on his out lap and create some space, pump in a hot lap and make sure his in-lap was 5% faster, perhaps even do a racing style stop to ensure he got out for another run. Is that really so hard to work out?
Roll back to Monaco, it was the teams fault that on his first hot lap he cocked it up (blaming Massa who was a good 5 seconds up the road), and the teams fault that Perez binned it and causing a Red Flag, and the team faults that Lewis then couldn’t produce the goods when the pressure was on. Then you look at the wet races this year, he is totally reliant on the team for wet tyre calls, his team mate isn’t. This all adds up to show that although Lewis is a very fast driver, he lacks that 5% spare brain capacity when driving that allowed Schumacher to win so many races and JB to win so many wet races.
“None of us is perfect”…. was Whitmarsh trying to be ironic with that or is his English just poor?
Say what you will about Massa, but he was in a good position until the race mishap with Hamilton. Massa is fighting to keep his position at Ferrari, and in a sense Lewis is fighting for his place as #1 at Mclaren. It is unsportsmanlike (to say the least) to ruin the race for someone who is probably ‘only’ going to finish 5th or 6th, for no good reason and expect that they’ll take it lying down. Lewis wouldn’t, he’d be almighty pissed if Massa had clipped him like that. But Massa’s ire was not worth a response. As I’ve mentioned on another thread, Lewis does not seem to be able to reconcile the two personas that he likes to project; the nice likeable bloke from humble roots and “THE” Lewis Hamilton Mclaren wunderkind. He seems to think that he can drive with the sort of agression of Senna and Schumacher, yet step out of the car and everyone is going to like him and not question his actions on track. Lewis is in a bad place, and he needs to get his head sorted out. Unfortunately he’s surrounded himself with yes men. I pity him in a way because Jensen has had his dad by his side being his dad all his life. Lewis has had his dad as manager when he should have been dad, and the man whom he looked up to as a father figure (Ron Dennis) also manipulated and mangaged him as well. With all the posse he has following him around he strikes me as a fairly lonely fellow who doesn’t know who he is.
Hamilton making mistakes is nothing new. If he kept his head on straight in 07 he would have had that WDC. All he need was 4 points maximum out of the final two events.