Force India’s Adrian Sutil has suggested he and Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton are still some way off sorting out their differences after the two came face-to-face in an FIA press conference today for the first time this season. The duo were once good friends, having got on well as they made their way through the various junior formulae and in their first few years in Formula 1 together. The situation changed in 2011, though, when Sutil was involved in an incident in a Shanghai nightclub following Hamilton’s Chinese Grand Prix win. Sutil had hoped Hamilton would serve as a witness, but More…
Lewis Hamilton says that Mercedes’ positive start to the season, with a pole and two podiums, is much better than he expected, but believes there is a lot more to come from the Brackley team. Pre-season Hamilton had managed expectations carefully, not wanting to over promise and under deliver given how poor Mercedes were in the second half of 2012. However he is right there in the championship with the group of title contenders, Sebastian Vettel, Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso, on 40 points. On the eve of the Bahrain Grand Prix, Hamilton has been speaking extensively about the work More…
Nico Rosberg says he is confident that there is no number one and no number two at Mercedes despite being asked to hold position behind team-mate Lewis Hamilton in Malaysia. Rosberg, 27, was quicker than Hamilton, 28, in the closing stages in Sepang and asked if he could overtake the 2008 world champion. However team principal Ross Brawn refused his request citing that Hamilton had been asked to back off due to concerns over fuel consumption. Hamilton went on to finish third, scoring his first podium for the team and saying after the race that Rosberg deserved to be on More…
Bernie Ecclestone has revealed that he attempted last summer to broker a move for Lewis Hamilton to form a superteam with Sebastian Vettel at Red Bull, but that it foundered on Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz’s loyalty to Mark Webber. “Sebastian wouldn’t have cared if Lewis had signed for the team,’ Ecclestone told the Mail on Sunday. “Dietrich is a very honest, straightforward guy and told Mark the door was open for him to stay. That was good of him.” Webber at the time was considering an offer from Ferrari to partner his friend Fernando Alonso, but in the end More…
Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes made a firm statement of intent today as they finally ran the Pirelli soft tyre and dominated the penultimate day of pre-season testing in Barcelona. Having been the only team to not yet run the yellow banded soft tyre, the F1 paddock would not have anticipated that Hamilton would shave over a second off the fastest time that we have seen in Barcelona so far this year. Mercedes themselves believed their gain to be closer to half a second, so their improvement will be thought provoking for their rival teams. Mercedes’ tyre difficulties have always appeared More…
Lewis Hamilton is doing a great deal of his work in the media at the moment setting out his stall in the early stages of the Mercedes relationship. And an interview in today’s L’Equipe with Fred Ferret is a good example of how the 2008 world champion wants to draw some lines in the sand; to get some basic understandings out there, knowing that the world’s commentators, media and public will all have plenty of opinions and judgements on the rights and wrongs of his move down the grid, as he goes through the first year at the Mercedes team. More…
Romain Grosjean continued Lotus’ strong form during this week’s first winter test by topping the times of Day 2 at Jerez, as the teams piled on the mileage, some covering around 100 laps while Lewis Hamilton’s opening day at Mercedes came to an abrupt end due to a brake failure. Hamilton had completed just fifteen laps this morning and had just done a lap in the 1m 19.5s, when a hydraulic brake line at the back caused him to run straight on at the Dry Sack hairpin and lightly in to the barriers. The back-straight leading in to Dry Sack More…
Sam Michael believes there are no hidden motives behind Lewis Hamilton leaving McLaren and that the driver’s desire to take on a new challenge simply outweighed everything else, even the chance to continue driving a proven race-winning car. The McLaren sporting director gave his assessment on Hamilton’s momentous decision to swap Woking for Mercedes from 2013 while looking back on some of the major talking points of the season alongside a panel of fellow experts in the December edition of the JA on F1 podcast (click here to download). When Hamilton’s three-year Mercedes deal was made public at the end More…
Lewis Hamilton’s final race for McLaren in Brazil represented a clear closing of an era for the Woking squad both in terms of its long-standing relationship with its one-time protégé and, after three season and 58 races in tandem, the team’s high-profile all-British world champion driver line-up. While Hamilton’s hopes of saying farewell with an Interlagos victory were scuppered when Nico Hulkenberg slid into him at turn one, Jenson Button was able to pick up the pieces and lay down a marker for 2013 when he will inevitably assume additional responsibility and expectation at the team given the relative inexperience More…
Lewis Hamilton has claimed his seventh pole position of the season and the last for McLaren, at the season ending Brazilian Grand Prix, heading a McLaren front row with Mark Webber in third. It was McLaren’s 62nd front row lock out, which establishes a new F1 record. After his well judged win in Austin last weekend, this was Hamilton once again on form, highlighting what might have been had the McLaren been as reliable as it has been fast this season. The title battle between Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso meanwhile, will see the two start three places apart, with More…
Lewis Hamilton followed up his win in Austin last Sunday with a strong performance in practice for the Brazilian Grand Prix season finale. The McLaren driver set a fastest time of 1m 14.028 to head championship leader Sebastian Vettel by 0.274 secs. Having set the fastest low-fuel time on the medium tyre, his performance on the long runs also looked good, however he did give the tyres a breather from time to time, which he will not be able to do in race conditions. Rivals did unbroken sequences of laps, so the picture is not as clear as it may More…
Lewis Hamilton’s father, Anthony, has given a revealing insight into how his relationship with his son has evolved over the last couple of years and why the move to Mercedes is another example of him flying the nest. Hamilton Snr’s presence in McLaren’s post-race celebrations of Hamilton’s brilliant victory in Austin pointed towards father and son having firmly been reconciled this year after a period in which their relationship, publicly at least, has appeared more distant. The pair had been famously more akin to a double act as Lewis came through the motorsport ranks and into his record-breaking early years More…
Lewis Hamilton continued his strong record in North America by winning an exciting race in Austin, Texas. Although Red Bull clinched the Constructors’ Championship, the result forced the Drivers’ Championship battle to roll on to the final race of the season in Brazil, as Sebastian Vettel was beaten into second place while his title rival Fernando Alonso completed the podium, from seventh on the grid. Losing the extra seven points a win would have given, the result sees Vettel increase his Championship lead over Alonso by just three points, to thirteen, whilst Red Bull have become the first Formula One More…
If Lewis Hamilton felt that Sebastian Vettel’s had been “lucky” to rescue a third place finish in Abu Dhabi, it was certainly not a word you could apply to the McLaren driver’s own race on Sunday, or indeed his season as a whole. Although Hamilton has been effectively out of the title running for several races now, confirmation that his wait for a second drivers’ title would stretch into a fifth season, and beyond the end of his McLaren career, officially arrived under the lights at Yas Marina the moment his MP4-27 pulled off the road with a fuel pressure More…
Lewis Hamilton has started on the front row of the grid for all of the Abu Dhabi Grands Prix to date and tomorrow he starts from pole position ahead of Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel, while championship contender Fernando Alonso slipped back to 7th place, a disaster for his hopes of gaining ground on Vettel in the title race. It was Hamilton’s sixth pole of the season and the 25th of his career. He was on swashbuckling form, showing the speed that McLaren are likely to miss next season when he joins Mercedes. Team mate Jenson Button was 6/10ths slower More…
A few weeks have passed since it was confirmed that Lewis Hamilton will leave McLaren for Mercedes at the end of the 2012 season. Today Jenson Button admitted that he would be a “big loss”, while Hamilton has addressed the mountain he will have to climb next season with a Mercedes team which has failed to score points in the last three races. “The team loses a very fast driver, a guy that’s achieved a lot with the team, the last guy to win a world championship for the team,” said Button in the Abu Dhabi paddock this afternoon. “It’s More…
Lewis Hamilton has spoken today of his desire for a fresh challenge in Formula 1 and admitted that he has felt that way “for some time now”. The 27 year old underlined that he relishes the challenge of trying to turn a “struggling” team around, rather than “cruise” in one of the best cars in the field. Hamilton announced his move from McLaren to Mercedes last week and faced the cameras in Suzuka today. Speaking to the BBC, he said, “To stay would be easy, I had two similar offers on the table. To stay in a great car didn’t More…
Former McLaren driver turned driver manager Mark Blundell suspects that the “timing is right” for Lewis Hamilton to begin a new chapter in his career with Mercedes and predicts that the move will pave the way for the Briton’s management to take ‘Brand Hamilton’ to a whole new level. Blundell is ideally placed to analyse the switch from both a racing and commercial point of view having driven for McLaren in 1995 and then in more recent time conducted test driver Gary Paffett’s contract negotiations with the team, in addition to the driver’s long-standing relationship with Mercedes in DTM. Speaking More…
Welcome to the October edition of the JA on F1 podcast, brought to you by UBS. This month we’ve been quick to react to the confirmation of Lewis Hamilton’s move to Mercedes – we analyse why Hamilton jumped from a sporting and business point of view with former McLaren Mercedes driver, turned driver manager Mark Blundell and study the timeline and behind the scenes details with Daily Telegraph F1 writer Tom Cary. Plus with the recent death of pioneering F1 doctor Professor Sid Watkins, we have a moving tribute from “Senna” film-maker, fellow surgeon and close friend of the Prof, More…
[Updated] Lewis Hamilton has cut his 14-year umbilical cord to McLaren and announced he will join Mercedes at the end of the season on a three-year deal. In a huge coup for Mercedes and major shot in the arm for its ambitions of winning consistently in Formula 1 that was predicted by JA on F1 earlier this month, the 2008 world champion will replace Michael Schumacher in the team’s 2013 line-up, reuniting him with his old karting team-mate Nico Rosberg. Sauber’s Sergio Perez will replace Hamilton at McLaren. Intriguingly, however, there was no mention in the Mercedes press release of More…
Lewis Hamilton continued McLaren’s recent qualifying dominance, making it four poles from four races for the Woking team and underlining his value to them as he set an untouchable lap to claim pole position in Singapore ahead of Pastor Maldonado and Sebastian Vettel. Following Vettel’s dominance of all free practice sessions Hamilton set the bar at an unbeatable height in the final part of qualifying to claim his 5th pole of 2012 and his 3rd in four races, by almost half a second. It is his 24th career pole position, matching that of Niki Lauda and Nelson Piquet and the More…
[Updated] Formula 1 sage and former McLaren team co-ordinator Jo Ramirez believes a failure to come to terms with the fact that he had been beaten by team-mate Jenson Button explained Lewis Hamilton’s tweeting of telemetry traces at Spa. Hamilton endured a miserable weekend in Belgium at the start of this month, becoming embroiled in controversy over several messages posted to the social media site – all of which were ultimately taken down. Ramirez, a mainstay at McLaren for 17 years before retiring in 2001, reckons that the telemetry incident highlighted a general reluctance for the current generation of drivers More…
The Italian Grand Prix is shaping up to be a thriller with close times set through the field and the top eight cars separated by 0.25 seconds in a fascinating Free Practice session 2 at Monza. Lewis Hamilton didn’t seem to distracted by being the centre of attention over his possible Mercedes move; he set the fastest time for McLaren ahead of team mate Jenson Button, three hundredths of a second behind. Fernando Alonso set the third fastest time despite a problem ridden day which saw a forced engine change after FP1, a brake problem and a gearbox problem. He More…
Lewis Hamilton faced the media today, 24 hours after BBC’s Eddie Jordan launched the story about him moving to Mercedes. So too did Mercedes team boss Ross Brawn, who said that he wants Mercedes to be a team every driver would want to drive for. Hamilton denied that a deal was done with Mercedes, but did not say he wasn’t talking to them. He also said he didn’t know where he would be driving next season. Mercedes did not deny that they were negotiating with Hamilton, but said that they wouldn’t comment. McLaren say only that Hamilton’s management have told More…
[Updated] Lewis Hamilton didn’t have a great day on Saturday in Spa. First he went the wrong way on aerodynamic set up, selecting the higher downforce option and ending up well behind team mate Jenson Button, then he got into a twist with his Twitter feed, using the expression “WTF” to highlight his frustration with the decision, before swiftly deleting the tweet and rephrasing it. On Sunday morning he did the same with a photo of his telemetry printout out, compared to Button’s. “Jenson has the new rear wing on, I have the old. We voted to change, didn’t work More…
McLaren boss Martin Whitmarsh believes the performance the team showed in the two races immediately prior to the summer break has set it up to have a real crack at both world championship titles over the remainder of the season. The Woking squad had looked in danger of being cut adrift in the battle for the drivers’ championship in particular after disappointing race performances in Valencia and Silverstone but a big upgrade for the German Grand Prix provided a much-needed breakthrough with Jenson Button finishing second there and Lewis Hamilton then winning the following weekend in Hungary. Hamilton is in More…
The Hungarian GP weekend may have prevented Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button from following the opening days of the 2012 Olympics too closely but the British pair ensured they were showing their support for the 541 athletes taking part in the London Games for Team GB by carrying a message of support on their race helmets. Both drivers raced with ‘Go Team GB’ stickers on the top of their crash helmets over the weekend at the Hungaroring, with Hamilton also displaying a message in support of his father Anthony family’s country, Grenada, which has 10 competitors in action at the More…
Lewis Hamilton won his second Grand Prix of the season after a sustained challenge from the Lotus drivers Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean, who joined him on the podium. It was his 19th career victory and one of the most important as it gets him back in the game in the championship, taking 15 points out of Alonso’s lead over him and cutting it to 47 points. Webber remains second in the table with Vettel third after a mixed day for Red Bull with both cars forced to stop three times. Hamilton dominated the qualifying session on Saturday and led More…
Lewis Hamilton dominated qualifying in Hungary, setting the pace in all three sessions with two laps fast enough for pole position. His margin over second place was more than four tenths, while he had six tenths in hand over his team mate Button in 4th place. It was Hamilton’s 22nd career pole and the 150th for McLaren. He is joined on the front row by Lotus’ Romain Grosjean in his highest ever starting position after an entertaining session. Sebastian Vettel had to use up sets of soft tyres just to make it into Q3 and his challenge was blunted as More…
Lewis Hamilton will start his 100th Grand Prix on Sunday, but as he revealed in media briefings on the eve of practice, he has mixed feelings about his lack of success in the last few years. Nevertheless, his former team mate Fernando Alonso, who has described himself as being in the form of his life, gave the Englishman a thumbs up, saying that he is the driver he considers his greatest rival. “Why do I talk about Hamilton when McLaren has been in crisis for a few races?” said the Spaniard, “Because he always manages to get something extra from More…
The McLaren Group has announced a new branch of its company, McLaren Animation. The new venture is aimed at bringing a more accessible front to McLaren as well as stimulating increased brand loyalty; as is apparent in the company’s first production – ‘Tooned’. McLaren Animation has set up an alliance with Oscar-winning animation studio Framestore – whose recent projects have included the film War Horse and the BBC’s Euro 2012 title sequence – to create ‘Tooned’, a new show featuring the voices of Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button as themselves as well as Alexander Armstrong, who will voice Professor M. More…
Here is the on board lap of the imaginary F1 track around London which was such a talking point yesterday. The launch event last night was an interesting affair; Bernie Ecclestone, predictably, did not show up. It was his intervention with the Times newspaper that turned this from a light hearted PR stunt by Santander UK with Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button ahead of the British Grand Prix, which the bank also sponsors, into something of a monster; with TV networks, radio stations and other media clamouring to cover it. Last night’s event went from being a champagne and canapés More…
McLaren heads into the middle phase of the season hopeful it has finally turned a corner with its pit stops and strategy in wake of Lewis Hamilton’s victory in Canada, operations director Simon Roberts has said today. The team’s attempts to capitalise on the MP4-27’s generally strong pace since Jenson Button’s season-opening victory in Australia had been hampered by repeated errors in pit stops in particular but a change to its processes and personnel since Spain have steadily improved the situation, with analysis on this website showing that, while McLaren’s fastest pit stop remained behind those of chief rivals’ Ferrari, More…
There has been a lot of talk in recent weeks about championship leader Lewis Hamilton’s next F1 contract, with his long term deal with McLaren due to expire at the end of this season. Hamilton is now managed by Simon Fuller’s XIX entertainment group and clearly the next contract for Hamilton is an important one, both financially and in terms of his competitiveness. Yesterday McLaren group chairman Ron Dennis shed some light on how they see it, in an interview on Sky, “It’s a complex situation,” said Dennis. “He is on the end of a contract which was signed a More…
Lewis Hamilton became the seventh different winner in seven Grands Prix this season with a cool headed drive on a day of strategy gambles. It was his third Canadian Grand Prix win and the 18th of his career. It gave him the lead in the drivers’ championship by two points over Alonso and three points over Vettel. It was McLaren’s 13th win in Canada. The victory was built on a two stop strategy which proved the right one, although it gave some nervous moments after his second stop, when it became clear that main rivals Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel More…
McLaren’s Martin Whitmarsh has outlined the reasons why his team should remain very upbeat about its prospects this season, the team principal highlighting several positives amid a succession of missed chances – including what he believes is the advent of a more measured approach to racing from Lewis Hamilton. The Woking-based outfit arrived at the first race of the season having hit its long-held target of having a car capable of winning the first grand prix but since locking out the front row at the second round in Malaysia its race performances have been compromised by a string of team More…
Lewis Hamilton has been speaking today about McLaren’s race performances and the mismatch with their qualifying performances, which has been one of the mysteries of this 2012 season. Hamilton has qualified on the front row five times in five races, although in China he had a gearbox penalty and in Barcelona he was demoted to the back of the grid for a fuel load irregularity. And yet the race pace hasn’t matched up to the qualifying pace and it’s left them chasing the game on Sundays. Of course pit stop errors have played their part in him not achieving better More…
Lewis Hamilton couldn’t believe his luck in qualifying for the Spanish Grand Prix, as not only did he take a dominant pole position, but his main rivals for the win all tripped up in one way or another. However his luck changed after the session as the FIA Technical delegate reported him to the stewards for a fuel quantity irregularity after he stopped out on track on his cool down lap. Tyres were again the dominant story, as teams tried all manner of curious strategies to give themselves the best chance in the race. Sebastian Vettel looked good in practice More…
Lewis Hamilton has spoken of his renewed happiness both on and off the race track after a start to the season which has taken him back to the top of the world championship standings for the first time in nearly two years. The tumultuous nature of Hamilton’s 2011 was well-documented with setbacks in both his racing and his private life contributing to his self-described worst year in Formula 1, but a productive winter allowed him the chance to re-focus and piece back together the ingredients he sees as being key to his personal equilibrium. Speaking to the British media in More…
Michael Schumacher topped the time sheets this afternoon in the drier of the two practice sessions, but the indications from the long runs and analysis of lap times is that McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton is the man to beat this weekend. The McLaren driver has confirmed that he will have to move five places back on the grid from where he qualifies, due a forced gearbox change, but in terms of car pace he looked the fastest today. Hamilton set the fastest time in the damp morning session and then finished second behind Schumacher in the afternoon session, with the Red More…
Lewis Hamilton got to see first hand the hardships faced by street children in Manila this week when he headed straight from the Malaysian Grand Prix to the capital of the Philippines to record a short film for UNICEF. The 2008 F1 world champion met some of the estimated 85,000 children who live and work on the streets in Manila, documenting his experiences in the Binondo area of the city in a film that will air during the celebrity football event Soccer Aid that raises money for children’s charity UNICEF and airs on ITV1 in the UK on May 27. During his two-day trip Hamilton More…
Lotus driver Romain Grosjean set the pace again on Day 2 in Barcelona, setting the fastest time of the day in 1m 22.614, but he also managed 124 laps in the day including a race simulation which impressed onlookers. Grosjean said,”I’m very happy with the car, and it was great that we could still run strongly at the end of the session, even after a long stint.” Team mate Kimi Raikkonen takes over tomorrow in the car for the remainder of the test. Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso managed the Scuderia’s first race distance simulation this afternoon, after Felipe Massa’s attempt yesterday. More…
Here is something a bit different, which will hopefully give fans a flavour of the McLaren 2012 car launch yesterday. It’s an opportunity to listen to the audio of the media group interviews conducted yesterday with Lewis Hamilton, Jenson Button and Martin Whitmarsh. Hamilton speaks about what he’s been doing over the winter, his 2011 season to forget and his hopes for the year. He also speaks about how it feels to be getting older as a driver, now 27 years of age. Button speaks about his feelings about the competition, particularly the thrill of being one of a record More…
“What I have decided to do this year is just focus on the most important thing and that’s racing,” Lewis Hamilton told the media today at the launch of his 2012 McLaren car. After a 2011 season that was overshadowed by stories of his troubled personal life, Hamilton has hit the reset button over the winter and is ready to do what he does best: take the fight to the other F1 front runners. But its hard to completely shed baggage in this game; at the same time he got a brickbat from his old friend Adrian Sutil who was More…
Lewis Hamilton has done a short interview in La Gazzetta dello Sport today in which he says a couple of interesting things. One is about team mate Jenson Button, the other on Felipe Massa. On Button he says, “Jenson is very fast and has built around himself a very strong team of technicians. I always want to beat him and I’m never happy if I don’t. But psychologically I don’t see it as a problem. He’s an open person who you can get along with. “It would be great to fight with him for the world title in 2012, it More…
The feud which has simmered between Lewis Hamilton and Felipe Massa this season, often flaring into an on track clash, has been put to an end by Hamilton visiting Massa after the race to make up. The Brazilian was finishing off his press briefing at the front of the Ferrari hospitality area when Hamilton approached him and gave him a hug and said a few words. It is not clear whether Hamilton felt moved to make some kind of apology or just a gesture to say that he wanted to put the events behind them. But either way, Massa, who More…
Lewis Hamilton looked on good form today in the paddock at Interlagos as he spoke openly about his ups and downs in 2011 and drew the conclusion that although it’s been a painful year, he has grown as a driver and his three wins, including at the last race in Abu Dhabi, were a great satisfaction. He will be going all out for a fourth on Sunday. “It’s been a year of growth, which was one of the most positive things I have learned this year,” he said. “It really has been. What I’ve learned this year I’ll take into More…
Lewis Hamilton won the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix after a close battle with Fernando Alonso, with Jenson Button in third place. It was Alonso’s 73rd podium and his first trophy from this event, so he now has a complete set of trophies from every track he’s raced on in F1. It was Hamilton’s 17th career victory and his third of this season and although he said he felt “fantastic” he was also pretty humble in his post race statements, saying that one win hadn’t necessarily put him back on track, he felt above all “fortunate not to get into any More…
With two races to go in the 2011 F1 season and Jenson Button ahead of Lewis Hamilton by 38 points, we’re running a competition to predict what the final points position will be between the two McLaren team mates after the final race in Brazil. Hamilton had the edge during the first two thirds of the season then Button got in front at the Belgian Grand Prix and since then his run of podiums and a win in Japan have eased him clear, while Hamilton has been involved in collisions and hasn’t hauled in the points. Hamilton, who has never More…
One of the themes running through the second half of this season has been Lewis Hamilton’s troubled demeanour and the way issues off the track have affected his performances on it. Here in the Yas Marina paddock yesterday Hamilton offered a window in to his troubled soul, confirming many of the things commentators have been saying for months about the effect his private life have had on his professional life. He explains some of how he is feeling. He envies team mate Jenson Button’s protective “bubble” of friends and family and faces the prospect of being beaten by a team More…
It was interesting last night after the Indian Grand Prix to hear McLaren boss Martin Whitmarsh suggest that part of the reason for Lewis Hamilton being off form and rather niggly with many people he encounters in F1 at the moment is because he isn’t enjoying being beaten by his team mate, Jenson Button. “Lewis will be feeling under pressure because of the great performances from Jenson at the moment, ” said Whitmarsh. “Lewis, the great, exciting driver that he is, will not like being beaten by Jenson. I don’t want him to enjoy being beaten by his team-mate. I More…
Felipe Massa spoke around 90 minutes after the Indian Grand Prix in which he was penalised with a drive through for colliding with Lewis Hamilton. It was the sixth occasion the pair have collided in a bitter season. Speaking after the race Massa said, “I don’t have anything against him. Zero. If I saw him I would tell him what I’m telling you now. “I don’t understand why I have the penalty. I braked later than him, I was in front and on the grippier part of the circuit and I didn’t see him on the left. So he was More…
Here is my video of the day a F1 fan drove Lewis Hamilton’s McLaren F1 car at Silverstone. Djorge Simic works in a bank in Serbia, but for one day he got to taste the shattering performance of a 2008 F1 McLaren, the car in which Lewis Hamilton won the 2008 British Grand Prix. Contributing to the video are Mika Hakkinen and Hamilton – “I bet he’s crapping his pants!” says Hamilton when asked how the fan will be feeling moments before the off. Simic was chosen from 17 finalists to win the drive as the top prize in McLaren More…
I’ve got a fantastic competition this weekend for JA on F1 readers around the world; we have four signed Senna movie posters and DVDs of the film, released this week, to give away. All you have to do is predict the time gap between the two McLaren drivers at the finish of Sunday’s Korean Grand Prix and in whose favour. So for example if you think that Jenson Button will finish ahead of Lewis Hamilton by 4 seconds use the comments box below and write “Button by 4 secs”. Or you could predict that one will finish and the other More…
The aftermath of the collision between Lewis Hamilton and Felipe Massa at Singapore shows no signs of abating. Immediately after the race we had Massa attempting to confront the Englishman, who rebuffed him in front of the TV cameras at the track. Then there came the suggestion that the F1 drivers want to meet with FIA Race Director Charlie Whiting in Suzuka this weekend to discuss Hamilton’s overly aggressive driving. Then at the weekend F1.com ran a race edit featuring a radio clip of Massa’s race engineer Rob Smedley urging his driver to,”Hold Hamilton as much as we can. Destroy More…
There is an interesting story from Press Association today with quotes from Lewis Hamilton denying that he has got distracted by his celebrity lifestyle to the detriment of his career in F1. Even his most ardent fans would admit that Hamilton’s performances this season have been uneven, with some very high peaks, such as the German Grand Prix, but also some troughs, where he has collided with other cars and wasted opportunities. Hamilton’s high profile girlfriend Nicole Scherzinger and his friendships with music industry figures like Pharrell Williams and P Diddy have drawn him away from his roots as a More…
The FIA Stewards have penalised Pastor Maldonado for the incident in qualifying with Lewis Hamilton. The Venezuelan will drop five grid positions from 16th to 21st on the grid after the stewards decided that he was the one most at fault. Hamilton gets off with a reprimand, but it’s important to recognise that in the stewards’ eyes he too is guilty of “a breach of the regulations” by causing an incident under article 16.1 – in this case the relevant definition from the menu of definitions in that Article must be “caused a collision”. Close inspection of the replays show More…
Stefano Domenicali, the team boss of Ferrari, has been hosting a summer break version of the Wrooom winter sports event which has traditionally prefaced the start of the F1 season. Some important messages have come out of this event and from the Ferrari website at the same time. These are principally an insight into his and Ferrari’s thinking on drivers for the future and the strategy for making sure they are competitive in 2013. But he has also said quite clearly that he doesn’t think that Lewis Hamilton will drive for Ferrari at any stage. First the drivers: “For the More…
Lewis Hamilton’s race today was compromised by a bad strategy call to go for intermediates when they were not needed and by a drive through penalty for almost colliding with Paul di Resta as Hamilton recovered from a spin. The incident was uncannily similar to one he had in the Turkish round of the 2006 GP2 series. Hamilton received no penalty for it in GP2 but he did today. Take a look at this video at 49 seconds from the start. Today Di Resta had to go with all four wheels off the track to avoid Hamilton and the stewards, More…
Lewis Hamilton won a tense three way battle for victory in the German Grand Prix, beating Fernando Alonso and the pole sitter Mark Webber. It was Hamilton’s second win of the season and the 16th of his career. It was a great weekend for Hamilton, his result set up by a stunning qualifying lap and a great start, where he took the lead from pole sitter Mark Webber on the run down to Turn 1. And the victory was topped off by his overtake on Alonso after the Spaniard had emerged ahead of him from his second pit stop. “If More…
Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner has today come out with some comments which close the door firmly on ideas of Lewis Hamilton joining the Red Bull Racing team. Horner met with Hamilton at the recent Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal, starting all kinds of speculation which neither man was quick to shoot down. It was a puzzling incident from many angles; at Hamilton’s press briefing on Thursday in Valencia, he said that his meeting with Horner had taken place before qualifying in Canada. Horner later confirmed that it was at about 5pm on Saturday evening. With Vettel under contract More…
Here is the video highlights edit of Lewis Hamilton and Kamui Kobayashi’s appearance at the FOTA Fans Forum UK event at McLaren. Fans wanted to know all about the pair’s prowess at overtaking and the two drivers did not disappoint. “What does it feel like to actually pull off a fantastic overtaking manoeuvre?”, Hamilton was asked. His reply: “It’s exhilarating. It’s probably the most exciting part of the race, when you’re not too fast compared to the guy in front. You’re just creeping up on him and looking to see where he’s weaker so that you can attack next time More…
FOTA Fans’ Forum, UK. Part 2: Drivers by James Allen on F1 You can listen to all of the audio from this afternoon’s FOTA Fans’ Forum discussion involving Lewis Hamilton and Kamui Kobayashi on the SoundCloud link above. Predictably, fans’ questions largely revolved around their prowess in overtaking. Although one fan asked Hamilton what question he would ask Ayrton Senna if he had the chance. “I’d ask him how he managed to qualify a second ahead of the rest in Monaco that time,” said Hamilton. Both drivers agreed that of the three aids to overtaking in F1 today, KERS tyres More…
The Mobil 1 seat swap footage is now out, with various content from Watkins Glen in upstate New York. Lewis Hamilton, fresh from his nightmare weekend in Montreal, was driving Tony Stewart’s Chevrolet Impala, while Stewart climbed into the cockpit of the McLaren MP4-23, the car from 2008, Hamilton’s title winning year. Despite some fairly mixed weather, the pair seem to have enjoyed experiencing each others’ machinery on the long course at “The Glen”, which is a 3.4-mile road course. There is a deeper strategic play going on here. The seat swap is quite timely and is part of the More…
As the rain lashed the Montreal circuit yesterday, forcing the race to be stopped, all of the leading drivers knew that this day was an opportunity. Canada often presents them. Admittedly Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel, who has dominated the season so far, was in the driving seat at that stage, but with constantly changing conditions, safety cars and chaos, there was a chance to make something happen. As Jenson Button did. But by that stage Lewis Hamilton already had no chance to affect the outcome, having had another messy race in which Emerson Fittipaldi’s verdict that he is “too aggressive More…
Lewis Hamilton was right at the centre of things in the early stages of the Montreal race weekend. He took part in the FIA press conference and was obliged to explain his behaviour in Monaco, where he criticised the FIA stewards and fellow drivers and what he had done about it afterwards. Hamilton said that he had been home and had a rest and time to reflect on his words and actions last week. He wrote a letter to FIA president Jean Todt apologising for his words about the stewarding, and accusations that the FIA stewards pick on him. It More…
Racing drivers very rarely say sorry, especially the really competitive ones who regard winning as their birthright. Senna, Schumacher and the like rarely used the ‘S’ word. Schumacher was asked to on numerous occasions, but only did so under extreme duress, such as post Jerez 1997 when Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo demanded that he host a press conference and apologise for his collision with Jacques Villeneuve. Today Lewis Hamilton has apologised to Felipe Massa and Pastor Maldonado for any offence caused by his comments after the race, when he complained about them not giving him room when he attempted More…
Lewis Hamilton has had his time from Q3 deleted by the stewards in Monaco as he missed the chicane. And speaking to TV reporters after the session he appeared to criticise his engineers for putting him in a vulnerable position, only doing one run at the end. Other teams have expressed surprise at McLaren’s tactics, as Monaco is famous for throwing up incidents. For that reason most teams planned two Q3 runs of two laps each in case a run or a first lap was compromised. The Englishman had been in the hunt for pole position, having set the fastest More…
The grey overcast skies and light drizzle in the Istanbul paddock make for a lifeless, gloomy sort of atmosphere. Drivers huddle in their rain jackets, stepping over puddles on their way from garage to motorhome. The latest forecast is for it to improve from Saturday, which is a relief. Add in the total lack of crowd or any kind of buzz around the event and F1 seems to be in a sterile bubble this weekend, going about its business behind closed doors. But it still has to put on a show and luckily there is a lot going on in More…
Lewis Hamilton won the Chinese Grand Prix, breaking Sebastian Vettel’s stranglehold on F1 this season in a thrilling Grand Prix which featured the Holy Grail of a pass for the lead in closing stages of the race. It was Hamilton’s first win since September last year and the fifteenth of his 74 race career. And it wasn’t because of the DRS wing, the pass Hamilton pulled on Sebastian Vettel happened in Turn 7, one of the faster corners on the track, when Vettel least expected it and it came about because of differences of strategy. Hamilton had learned from his More…
Lewis Hamilton won the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa Francorchamps, in a lights to flag victory, having started second on the grid. It was Hamilton’s third win of the season and the 14th of his F1 career. He retook the championship lead. Mark Webber was second and Robert Kubica third. Felipe Massa and Adrian Sutil both had strong days in difficult conditions finishing fourth and fifth. Hamilton survived a major scare on lap 35, when his team insisted he stay out on slicks as the rain began to fall more heavily. It was reminiscent of China in 2007 when he More…
Red Bull got their 12th pole position in 13 races today, but behind that headline is an interesting story which gives McLaren some encouragement for the Grand Prix, particularly if it is wet, as it has been every day this weekend. I spoke with Mark Webber after the qualifying session and he seemed to be more impressed with Lewis Hamilton’s improvement of four tenths of a second at the end of the session when the track was wet, than he was with his own pole position. Asking engineers from other teams they share that sense of wonder at Hamilton’s final More…
You will have heard the expression “seat fitting” in connection with F1. Well this is what it looks like. This is a behind the scenes video I shot a little while ago at McLaren which provides a fascinating insight into the detail a team will go into to get the driver comfortable in the car. They have a perfect mock up of the chassis and all the components in it, like the steering wheel, headrest, seat padding and so on. You can see Lewis Hamilton working on the fine detail of the steering wheel movement and his seat padding. It More…
It was a tough day today for Lewis Hamilton and the signs are that McLaren face a tough weekend with its main opposition looking strong. The 2008 champion crashed in the rain in morning practice, hitting the tyre barriers hard and causing quite a bit of damage to his car. “It was very, very slippery, ” he said. “What was actually a relief was when I came back and everyone explained to me how it occurred. I hit the limiter and upshifted and I spun the wheels. Obviously a moment which I tried to correct and didn’t correct it well More…
Mark Webber won the British Grand Prix today and afterwards radioed the team to say, “Not bad for a number two driver” – a comment on the anger he still clearly feels about the team switching the front wings yesterday before qualifying. Lewis Hamilton had a very strong afternoon in the McLaren, finishing in second place despite the difficulties the team had this weekend with the blown diffuser package and with general handling problems. Nico Rosberg finished third. It was also a great day for the revamped Silverstone circuit which showed that the changes really have promoted overtaking. There were More…
Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton were today challenged by an 11 year old boy to arrange a bet between themselves as to who will come out on top in the world championship. The challenge, from 11 year old Carl Hillis, came during a press conference organised by British GP sponsor Santander, which I was hosting. The event took place at Great Ormond Street Hospital and Carl has been a patient there most of his life. He is writing an article for the hospital magazine and wanted to know what the loser would have to do if he lost. Jenson and More…
Here is an exclusive Jenson Button British Grand Prix preview for JA on F1 readers. It’s video we shot at the Westfield Shoping Centre in London last Thursday evening, a few hours after the Fans’ Forum ended – busy day! The reigning world champion, previews the race at Silverstone for us. He talks about what he found when he drove the new Silverstone layout on the McLaren simulator, describes the “buzz” of arriving at Silverstone both as world champion and in the thick of the fight for this year’s title and talks about the confidence he feels since winning the More…
One of the features of the European Grand Prix was Fernando Alonso’s anger at the actions of Lewis Hamilton when he safety car was deployed and at the length of time it took for the stewards to deal with it. Alonso has tonight accused the stewards of “manipulating” the race, while Ferrari said it was a “scandal”. On lap 9, the safety car was deployed to neutralise the field following Mark Webber’s heavy accident. Hamilton passed the safety car, just, after the second safety car line, in contravention of the rules. The timing of the safety car going out was More…
As you know, I’m a keen student of viral videos; not many people do them well in F1 and there have been plenty of poor ones. I quite like this latest effort from McLaren and Vodafone. They have done some lame ones, but the one where the two blokes build a remote control device and persuade McLaren to let them use it to drive a real F1 car was funny. This one shows Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton, left to their own devices by their mechanics, building what looks like a 2008 McLaren from a pile of parts. There is More…
Lewis Hamilton won the Turkish Grand Prix, his first victory of the season with Jenson Button second and Mark Webber third. It is McLaren’s second one-two finish of the season. Webber leads the drivers championship, McLaren take over the constructors’ championship lead. But the race will be remembered for the extraordinary incident on lap 40 when the two Red Bull cars drove into each other while fighting for the lead. It is likely to prove a turning point in the championship and certainly in the relationship between the drivers. It will require incredible management skill by Christian Horner to establish More…
Lewis Hamilton put in a great lap today, just 15/100ths of a second slower than pole sitter Mark Webber’s, to line up on the front row of the grid for the first time this season. It’s taken McLaren a long time to get on top of qualifying this season and although there is still some way to go to qualify ahead of the Red Bulls, the McLaren’s race pace indicates that we could have a race on our hands tomorrow. This is particularly true when you consider that the McLaren enjoys a 6km/h speed advantage on the straights, thanks to More…
Walking through the tunnel to the infield here in Barcelona I noticed something unusual about one of the images which have been put up to make the walls more colourful. Two years after his ill fated partnership with Fernando Alonso at McLaren, looks like some Spanish fans still cannot get over their negative feelings about Lewis Hamilton!
Lewis Hamilton put in another fighting drive from 20th on the grid to finish 6th in Sunday’s Malaysian Grand Prix. But he said afterwards that the McLaren team need to stop making life difficult for themselves and drew some criticism from Renault for the way he resisted the challenge of Vitaly Petrov. Hamilton changed direction four times in front of Renault’s Vitaly Petrov and was warned by the stewards for his driving, but not penalised. The incident happened at the start of lap eight. Hamilton had passed Petrov into the final corner at the end of lap five, but the More…
I’m very interested in the response of McLaren and its two drivers to the events in Australia. Jenson Button won the race with a performance of measured perfection and instinctive tactical brilliance, while Lewis Hamilton lit up Albert Park with his audacious passing, but ended up looking diminished in comparison with Button, less in control of his destiny, less mature. That isn’t so surprising; Button is 30 years old and ten years into his F1 career, whereas Hamilton is 25 and only three years in. Perhaps because he won the title so early in his career and has been a More…
In a revealing interview with BBC Radio 5 Live this weekend, Lewis Hamliton has admitted that he has made “lots and lots of mistakes in my career, hopefully this will be a year of a lot fewer!” It’s very unusual to hear a driver admitting to any mistake, let alone lots of them. It is criticism that was often leveled at Michael Schumacher and has to a lesser extend been aimed at Hamilton from time to time. This charm offensive marks an interesting change of direction for Hamilton, ahead of what is likely to be another hard fought season. He More…
Lewis Hamilton has come out with the revelation that his father Anthony will no longer manage his career, in an interview with Autosport. The pair have been inseparable since Hamilton’s early karting days, but the dual roles of father and manager are difficult to balance because it is so hard to divorce emotion from what should be pragmatic decisions and with some of the strained situations which have arisen in Hamilton’s brief but turbulent F1 career, the 25 year old and his father have decided that they would like to have a more normal father and son relationship. “I want More…
It’s only early days and we have yet to see how fast the new cars are from each team. We have seen only the new Ferrari and McLaren cars, inert on a stage. On Monday in Valencia, when most of the serious teams hit the track, we will start to see the picture forming of who is where and that picture will become clearer over the following three tests. But the readers of JA on F1 have been voting on who they think is the man to beat at this stage of the game. Just under 5,000 votes have been More…
The two McLaren drivers Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button were quite a double act today at the launch of the new McLaren MP4/25. Hamilton welcomed his new team mate warmly, even suggesting that Button would get priority treatment in the event that the team could only produce one new piece of equipment for a race. In contrast to Ferrari and Mercedes, where there are obvious competitive tensions, the McLaren drivers are keen to appear well and truly loved up. It was obvious from the start of the presentation today. Hamilton spoke of how he had always looked up to Button More…
McLaren has reshuffled its engineering staff at the race track, giving both Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button new race engineers, who have been promoted from junior roles. Hamilton will work with 31 year old Andy Latham, while Button will be engineered by 39 year old Jakob Andreason, who was number two engineer on Hamilton’s car for the last few years. It is a statement of how careful they are trying to be to appear even handed between the two drivers. With painful experiences of Fernando Alonso’s year at the team, where allegations were made of preferential treatment towards Hamilton, McLaren More…
The two McLaren drivers for 2010, Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button have had some revealing things to say this week as F1 gets going again after the New Year. The in house battle at McLaren will be a real talking point this year and the pair are approaching it in different ways. Hamilton has come out strongly to challenge Fernando Alonso, who will square up to him in a Ferrari this season. If it were not for the return of Michael Schumacher, this renewal of an old and bitter rivalry would have become the leading story line of F1. Meanwhile More…
Lewis Hamilton has been in a class of one this weekend and today he looks set to end the season on a real high with a victory at the first Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. If that happens, it will be his third victory in the second half of the season, to go with three podiums; an outcome few would have predicted when the McLaren was two seconds off the pace in the Barcelona test. Hamilton was asked this evening whether he feels that with the car he now has, he could have competed for the world championship and his answer More…
Lewis Hamilton took a dominant pole position for the first Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in the McLaren, beating the Red Bull of Sebastian Vettel by an enormous 7/10ths of a second. It is Hamilton’s third pole position in the final five races of the season. Mark Webber was third, ahead of Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button. Hamilton has been the man to beat this weekend, topping most of the session times. It is in the middle sector with its two long straights that the McLaren was untouchable, setting a sector time some 7/10ths of a second faster than his opponents. More…
Lewis Hamilton handed his champions’ crown to Jenson Button last weekend and in Abu Dhabi will race with the number one on his car for the last time. He is determined to win it back again, as soon as next year, but in the short term he thinks that he and Button could finish 1-2 in the final race – and I think that is a distinct possibility. “He will make a great champion, ” said Hamilton on his website. “I’m proud of what he’s done – both him and his team – and I think he’ll come to Abu More…
Lewis Hamilton had his first taste of Suzuka today, a track which he admits he has always dreamed of racing on. A lot of this has to do with his great admiration for Ayrton Senna. Hamilton has a yellow crash helmet styled after Senna’s and is well aware that many of the most iconic moments in the Brazilian’s career happened here, like the championship -deciding collisions with Alain Prost in 1989 and 1990. Hamilton is unusual among drivers in having a pretty good knowledge of and interest in, F1 history. Even though it was a bit of a washout today, More…
Lewis Hamilton won the Singapore Grand Prix with a faultless drive from pole position to redeem himself after his last lap crash in Monza. But his task was made easier by key errors made by his two main rivals, Nico Rosberg and Sebastian Vettel. Both made mistakes in pit stops which brought them drive through penalties; Rosberg had done the hard work at the start, passing Vettel off the line to take second place, but then he got into trouble when he made a slip after his pit stop and crossed the white line on the pit exit. Vettel was More…
This is a good short video I spotted of Lewis Hamilton talking about his last lap crash at Monza and looking ahead to this weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix. I like it for the body language; Hamilton is standing in the race bay at the factory while his mechanics toil to repair his damaged car. “How bad was it?” Hamilton asks, rather bashfully. “Pretty bad, ” grunts the man lying under the car. Click on the link below:
This made me laugh. It’s Mika Hakkinen and Lewis Hamilton in a viral for Johnnie Walker, each making out that the “Pact” – not to drink and drive – was their idea. It’s funny because you can see the tells both men use when they are lying – as they clearly both are here. Mika is not a bad actor. There’s a moment at 40 seconds where he does this grin, which he used to do sometimes when you interviewed him. It’s a kind of involuntary show of emotion. I remember he did it after that amazing pass on Michael More…
Lewis Hamilton set the fastest time in the second Friday practice session for Sunday’s Belgian Grand Prix. The world champion was not expecting to be a front runner this weekend as the McLaren has had a weakness all season on high speed corners, of which there are several here. Timo Glock was second, with Toyota looking more competitive than they have for a while, ahead of Kimi Raikkonen and Mark Webber. Romain Grosjean did a strong job to end the session fifth in the Renault. Jaime Alguersuari, who set the 9th fastest time, pulled off the track in the closing More…
McLaren boss Martin Whitmarsh said after the race that the slow second pit stop of Lewis Hamilton did not cause him to lose the race, he believes that he was going to lose it anyway. Hamilton approached the pits on lap 37, while leading the race. At that stage Rubens Barrichello had closed up to be just 3.6 seconds behind him. He had four to five more laps of fuel in the car at the time and the general rule is that you need about one second lead for each extra lap your opponent is doing. It’s probably true that More…
Lewis Hamilton took his first pole position of the season and the 14th of his career at Valencia today, beating his McLaren Mercedes team mate Heikki Kovalainen into second place. Rubens Barrichello was third for Brawn GP. Sebastian Vettel was fourth with Jenson Button fifth. The other title contender, Mark Webber was down in 9th place. Hamilton tacked the session with great confidence, doing only one run and saving a set of tyres in the second part of qualifying. He said afterwards that it has been a long time since he had the car to do this. But he was More…
Fernando Alonso
Kimi Räikkönen
Felipe Massa
Sebastian Vettel
Mark Webber Nico Rosberg
Paul di Resta Jenson Button
Sergio Perez Daniel Ricciardo Sebastian Vettel Kimi Räikkönen Fernando Alonso Lewis Hamilton Felipe Massa Mark Webber
Romain Grosjean Paul di Resta Nico Rosberg Jenson Button Sergio Perez Daniel Ricciardo Adrian Sutil Nico Hulkenberg Jean-Eric Vergne Esteban Gutierrez Valtteri Bottas
Pastor Maldonado Jules Bianchi Charles Pic
Giedo van der Garde Max Chilton
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