Lewis Hamilton says he was not responsible for his poor start in Monza, despite a radio message to the team during the race in which he accepted blame.
At the Mercedes post-race debrief Hamilton was told by his engineers that it wasn’t his fault, and that the clutch was responsible.
“I’m told it wasn’t driver error, I’m told it wasn’t anyone’s error,” he said. “We continue to have an inconsistency with our clutch. You’ve seen it with Nico in Hockenheim. It’s bit me quite a lot this year. I was told the procedure was done exactly how I was supposed to do it, but unfortunately we just over delivery of torque, and the wheels were just spinning from the get-go.”
Hamilton said the team has worked extensively on the clutch this season.
“Of course, we never stop improving and learning. Today we would have learned again. But yeah, this year has been a harder year for us with out clutch. They’ll be working very hard. It’s not a quick fix, something you can change for the next race. We have made improvements, so we have seen more consistent, better starts, but we are still caught out by the random variation that we have from one weekend to the other. We do practice starts all weekend, and they’re varying a little bit, and then we get a drastic variation on the grip.
“As I said you’ve seen it with Nico, you’ve seen it with me, quite a few times. It is something that we need to work on. I can assure you on Tuesday [in the factory] that’s the only thing we’ll be talking about, because everything else we’re doing really well. So we’ll be trying to work and give as much information, learn as much as we can, if there’s any more, to try and make sure in the next six or seven races… We’re not struggling with pole positions, it’s just getting off the line.”
Adam Cooper F1 
This is the Kim Kardashian element of Lewis I can’t stand, the need to go to the media, or his own twitter account and maintain “The Brand”. “I didn’t make a bad start, it was the car” You win as a team, you lose as a team.
The guy has too much talent to have to do this. Remember that time at McLaren (Belgium 2012?) when he tweeted both his and Button’s telemetry to the public!
The guy shares information and now it’s the Kardashians? Please get over it.
Hi kcrossie, I will respectfully disagree. If memory serves McLaren ordered him to take the Lewis/Jenson down telemetry immediately, I think it even revealed ride height!
Regarding this race, I find the compulsion to go on the record saying that it was not his fault, regardless of what he said on the radio, as self-serving.
He lost 5 places at the start and then carved his way through the pack to finish second. Despite all of his flaws, do you ever recall Schumacher running to the press, to deflect blame from himself and on to the team when something went wrong?
As I said, the guy has too much talent to be constantly worried about his “Brand”.
I have to believe that if Schumi and Senna were racing today they would be involved with social media up to their eyeballs.
I would prefer ALL drivers to quietly accept all failures as team related, unless it is an obvious driver or team mistake.
After all, it is the fans and media thirst for information that fuels social media, is it not?
It is crazy how a Monza front row start makes fools of the cream of F1 drivers.
Last time out it was Kimi. This time the self-styled carrier of Senna’s baton went and dropped it ceremoniously.
If I believed in spirits of yester year and tosh like that I’d say they cause the clutch gremlins. That Monza start line sure is an eerie place.