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…

Another video from McLaren and this one is quite interesting. Lewis Hamilton won the last race in Budapest and was quick all weekend. He had a last minute front wing arrive from the UK on the Saturday morning and this seemed to make the car more stable and here he reveals that they also had a new rear floor on the car. There are more updates for Valencia this weekend and we’ll find out what those are tomorrow. He talks about coming back from holiday and getting ‘back to the grind’, which is pretty hilarious – his idea of grind More…

Lewis Hamilton has spoken of his delight at winning a race, the first time he has been on the podium since China last year. It was the 10th win of his career and the first for a KERS car. This is a source of particular joy for engine builder Mercedes, who seem to be building up quite a marketing campaign around the KERS hybrid on their road cars. KERS was certainly a big part of the secret here, with an electric getaway from the start and a great boost when overtaking the Red Bull of Mark Webber. McLaren have pushed More…

Lewis Hamilton won the Hungarian Grand Prix today, heading home Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen and Red Bull’s Mark Webber. Although many predicted a strong start for Hamilton after qualifying fourth, few would have guessed that he would drive away from the field in the race, his car handling both the soft and supersoft tyres very consistently. He made a move on Webber into turn one for second place at the start, but ran wide and Webber repassed him. Hamilton came back at him however and grabbed second place again. At the front pole sitter Fernando Alonso led in the Renault, but More…

There was a 2008 retro feel about the leaderboard today after first practice in Budapest as McLaren’s Heikki Kovalainen and Lewis Hamilton topped the time sheets. It was extremely close, with a second separating the top 19 cars over an 82 second lap. Afterwards it was generally agreed that Red Bull and Brawn remain the teams to beat, albeit that they expect trouble at the start from the KERS cars of McLaren and Ferrari, which are likely to qualify right behind them and pass them at the start. Interestingly it seems that Webber is again the stronger of the two More…

I was lucky enough to be at Silverstone last Wednesday, to spend the day with McLaren, driving the 650 bhp Mercedes SLR and being driven in it by the reigning world champion. This was part of the Lewis Hamilton British media rehabilitation exercise, particularly targetted at the Fleet Street guys after things got a bit out of control post the Melbourne-lying-to-stewards business. Hamilton got pretty wound up by some of the coverage and initially tried a route of non co-operation, but then recently the team has changed tack and this day at Silverstone was a way of hitting the reset More…

You will have seen some of the interviews Lewis Hamilton did this week, on Reuters, in the Times and on the BBC. The Times one caught my eye because it was an open expression of regret that Formula 1 has become a job and that he does not enjoy the political environment around him. Hamilton has slotted into the space left vacant by Michael Schumacher in Formula 1, clearly massively talented, unloved by his fellow drivers and always seeming to find himself tangled up in controversies. Senna occupied that space before Schumacher. The Times interview reveals the state of mind More…

Reigning world champion Lewis Hamilton has today backed Brawn GP’s Jenson Button, the runaway championship leader, to finish the job off and take his title. “I think Jenson’s got a great chance, a great shot at it so I wish him all the best,” he told Reuters’ Alan Baldwin today. “I think if I were to wish anyone (else) to win, it would be him.” It’s quite an exciting prospect for British F1 fans to have two consecutive world champions. This used to happen in the 1960s when British drivers dominated the F1 scene. In 1962 to 65, we had More…

If you liked that James Bond sequence where he drove the BMW Q had given him using by remote control using his phone, you’ll enjoy this wacky bit of video. I remember a few years ago F1 engineers were talking about how it was possible for an F1 car to drive itself. Well take a look at this. It’s a Vodafone viral for the Blackberry Storm, but it shows McLaren are getting funkeeeee! And please, no comments about how it might be faster than the car they’ve got at the moment! [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiLoANg6nNY]