Adam Cooper F1

Lewis Hamilton’s victory in Singapore put him in the lead of the World Championship with five races to go, albeit by the slender margin of just three points over team mate Nico Rosberg.

Hamilton had to work hard for his win however after the safety car cost him his advantage, and left him with the job of building up a gap after the restart.

“Coming here and to the last six races with a great race in Monza, knowing that we had a car to compete here, obviously yesterday in qualifying it was very close between everyone so I didn’t really know what to expect today,” said Hamilton. “But I got off cleanly. Of course it would have been a hardcore race if Nico was in the race with me, as the car was feeling very good and we would have been very strong.”

Lewis admitted that he wasn’t sure how the strategy would unfold after the safety car, when he had to build a gap and pit for the prime tyre, while his main rivals could run to the flag.

“I think for me I was a bit unaware of what I needed to do. That second-to-last stint, I extended it as long as I could and then they said ‘we need 27s.’ And that was still six seconds I needed more, and my tyres were dropping off, so I didn’t really understand why. And I was also nervous that, if the Safety Car came out, would that cause me big problems? So anyway, fortunately we got to where I needed to go and we pitted.

“I came out, and I saw Sebastian going past but straight away I knew they were obviously doing a two-stop, I would have good pace. So, took it easy the first lap. It was actually a bit of a tight gap, maybe I should have overtaken him somewhere else. but fortunately Sebastian was very fair and I got by. After that it was quite straightforward. Amazing job from the team and the guys back at the factory. The car was really spectacular in the race.”

Regarding the championship he said: “I came here hoping to really gain those seven points, and anything more than that was just a bonus, so today, of course, those extra points are a huge help. That’s several DNFs we’ve had now on either car and we want to continue getting those one-twos still.

“I know that the team will not be 100 percent happy today because we want to win collectively, we want to get those one-twos, we want to be the dominant team all together, so by not getting that result, they’ll be going back to the drawing board trying to figure out what happened. They’re constantly coming up to things and perhaps other people are starting to be a bit more reliable than us so that’s an area that we can still definitely improve on.”

The FIA’s Charlie Whiting has emphasised that the climbdown on radio restrictions was done in the interests of fairness, because some teams would be more affected than others by a short term change.

For this year the FIA will focus on driver coaching, and postpone restrictions on techncial discussions until next year.

The main problem is that teams use one of two dashboards, one of which carries less information than the other. The teams affected can ‘upgrade’ for 2015.

“We believe a driver should drive the car alone and unaided,” said Whiting when explaining the restrictions. “He shouldn’t be told that he’s going a bit too deep into this corner, should take a tighter apex on that corner. It’s for him to decide, not for his team to tell him how he’s comparing to his team mate, for example, so that’s the basis of it.

“It was becoming apparent that more or more was being done for the drivers, and quite simply that is at odds with article 20.1 of the regulations. We felt that this should extend to both car performance and driver performance related parameters, but when one looks into it in more detail it became quite clear that some teams will be at a disadvantage compared to the others, not just in their know how or ability to react in the short term, but also with hardware choices that were made a year ago, for example.

“I think you are familiar with the two types of dashboard that are available to the teams, one would simply show a great deal more than the other. In the interest of fairness we felt with the benefit of hindsight it would be have been better to introduce it in two stages, which is what we’ve done.

“The plan is to make it more far-reaching, to take in the technical elements of it as well, the technical assistance that drivers are getting about the performance of the car as well. It will inevitably be more complex, but I think that is how the sport is. I think it is going to be very hard to make it simpler, unless one was to remove radios from the car. Very simple. But I think that might not be very well received.”

Whiting said that eight people are listening to radio when the cars are running. Regarding possible penalties he said: “It’s not for me to say what the penalty will be, because it’s a matter for the stewards of course.

“What I would do is report to the stewards a possible contravention of Article 20.1, who would then decide what the penalty would be. I think it would have to be a sporting penalty, as opposed to a monetary one. If it happened it might be, I emphasise might be, a 5s time penalty for example if it happened in practice it might be a grid position or something like that.”

As expected Thursday’s meeting of the sporting regulations group has led to an easing of the restrictions given by the FIA to the teams earlier is week.

The meeting, which covered other future rules as well, gave the 11 team managers a chance to air their views to Charlie Whiting.

It was agreed that the restrictions on technical conversation and ‘routine’ running of the cars would be difficult to implement at such short notice, so the focus has moved to any chat which directly relates to driver performance, such as advice on gears, lines, and braking points, and comparisons with other drivers.

That still addresses the main reason for the ban, which was to counter the widespread feeling that modern drivers get too much help.