HAMILTON FURY AT DIRTY TRICKS
Lewis slams Ferrari ‘tactics’ as Raikkonen takes him out
LEWIS HAMILTON, denied his historic shot at victory by Kimi Raikkonen’s red dodgem, accused Ferrari of dirty tricks in the fight for the world championship.
A record crowd of 140,500 mostly Union Jack-waving fans let out an audible sigh after Hamilton, slowly away from pole, was hit at the third corner of the first lap.
The disappointment of that early skirmish with Raikkonen was still written all over his visage after the race — one he illuminated with a wonderful recovery drive to take second place under a roasting sun — and the champagne had been sprayed for Sebastian Vettel.
Indeed, Hamilton was so rattled that he walked straight off the tarmac to collect his thoughts rather than commit them straight to Martin Brundle’s microphone, as protocol demands.
The cameras then caught up with Hamilton in the green room, where he was crouching, spent from the exhaustion of pushing hard in the heat, no doubt, but also fuming at what he saw as the skulduggery that prevented him from eclipsing Jim Clark and Alain Prost as a record sixtime winner of British Grand Prix.
Brundle crept up the stairs like a teenager back home late from a night out to reach the podium to conduct the interview Hamilton had sidestepped down below.
‘Interesting tactics I would say from their side,’ said Hamilton, a reference to the Ferrari men flanking him — for Raikkonen finished third.
‘We’ll do what we can to fight them and improve in the next races.’
Down in the paddock, Hamilton’s team principal Toto Wolff put a little more flesh on the bone of innuendo, alluding to their technical director James Allison in saying. ‘To put it in James’s words, “Do you think it is deliberate or incompetence?” And that leaves us with a judgment to make.’ ‘Unfair and not funny,’ declaimed Niki Lauda, chairman of Mercedes.
Feeding into the team’s distrust of Ferrari was the smash of a fortnight before, when Vettel drove into the Mercedes of Valtteri Bottas on lap one in France.
Certainly, Raikkonen was culpable yesterday. He admitted as much afterwards. Hamilton had left him ample space to pass on the inside of the right-hander. Raikkonen locked up and hit Hamilton’s rear-right side. The Mercedes man spun off to the back of the field. The stewards punished the Finn with a 10-second penalty — five seconds more than Vettel received for his indiscretion.
Hamilton was so furious as he prowled the green room that he ignored Raikkonen’s presence. Later in a press conference, the Brit’s eyes welled up and his voice went high and dry.
‘That is two races the Ferraris have taken out one of the Mercedes and the punishments don’t feel enough,’ he said.
Vettel protested: ‘It is silly to think anything that happened was deliberate.’ And it looked a genuine mistake by Raikkonen. He has never been a notably dirty driver.
Hamilton may well have felt annoyance at himself after creating his victory chance with a superlative lap in qualifying, only to lose control of his fate with a poor start.
The same vulnerability off the line cost him dear in 2016 against Nico Rosberg. Yesterday, he suffered wheelspin and was third by the first corner. Then came the collision that shaped his afternoon.
Still, there was the wonder of his drive through the field, roaring from 18th to sixth in 10 laps, to savour. That surgical thrust was partly due to the speed of his car, but also a reflection of his mastery of it. Nobody can cut his way up and through the rest more adroitly than the 33-year-old. And the fans in the grandstands under the blue skies ooh-ed and ahh-ed in appreciation of the feast.
There were then two safetycar phases, the first when Marcus Ericsson smashed his Sauber at turn one, a 200mph accident from which the Swede walked away. All the top cars other than the Mercedes’ duo were called in for a change of rubber.
Was it a mistake — we wondered after Mercedes’ strategy error in Austria a week ago — to keep Hamilton out? The fact is that he was lying third on older tyres, whereas he would have been fifth on brand new ones, but better equipped to attack.
Hamilton was worried by his situation, saying: ‘There is no way I am going to be able to compete with these guys on old tyres.’
His engineer Peter Bonnington replied: ‘You’re the fastest out there by miles. It’s all there. Don’t give up.’
A second crash — a collision between Romain Grosjean and Carlos Sainz at Copse — again necessitated the safety car. When the action restarted, Vettel put himself on the tail of the slowing Bottas, running on tyres a few laps older than even Hamilton’s.
The German, driving with a sore neck, darted his red machine through superbly at Brooklands for victory and an eight-point lead going to his home race at Hockenheim on July 22.
As the minutes ticked down, Hamilton passed Bottas and was into second place. Raikkonen soon overtook Bottas for third.
And that was that, bar the accusations. TORO ROSSO driver Pierre Gasly lost a point after collecting a post-race penalty that promoted Sergio Perez to 10th place and lifted Force India above McLaren in the standings.
Stewards imposed a fivesecond penalty after ruling that Gasly had caused a collision with Perez and gained a place as a consequence.