Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
BOO HOO LEW
Hamilton accused of “crying like a girl”
LEWIS HAMILTON was accused of “crying like a girl” and told to take up ballet by Kimi Raikkonen’s wife following his collision with the Ferrari racer at Sunday’s British Grand Prix.
A furious Hamilton and his Mercedes team believed Raikkonen may have crashed into him on purpose to give championship leader Sebastian Vettel free reign at the front of the field.
Vettel won on Hamilton’s home turf to move eight points clear of the Briton, who recovered from last to finish second. Hamilton was furious with Raikkonen after the race and refused to dismiss the suggestion that his actions could have been deliberate.
But in a social media post Minttu Raikkonen, who has been married to the Finnish driver since 2016, said: “If you cry like a girl when you lose, do ballet.”
Later, after removing the post and when addressing a fan who defended Hamilton, she added: “Just to be clear, I was not talking about the driver but the team who was crying after that someone did something on purpose. No, he didn’t. It’s called racing.” In fact, former world champ Raikkonen apologised to Hamilton, and the Mercedes driver revealed: “Kimi said sorry and I accept it and we move on. “It was a racing incident and nothing more. Sometimes we say dumb s*** and we learn from it.” Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff had suggested the collisions between Ferraris and his cars in three races were either deliberate or incompetent.
Vettel also collided with Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas in France last month. Wolff’s comments angered Ferrari principal Maurizio Arrivabene, particularly as he had referenced former Ferrari technical director James Allison, who is now working for Mercedes. Austrian Wolff said: “In James Allison’s words, ‘Do you think it is deliberate or incompetence?’”
Arrivabene said afterwards that Allison should be ashamed if he had said that. The Italian fumed: “We’re here in England, sometimes they want to teach us how to be gentlemen, and he should start first. Really, this annoyed me so much.”