Techno Thoughts!

Days after a great 1st race of the season where Jenson Button drove an excellent race and drove from a great pole position to win the race with a Brawn 1-2, the whole race is surrounded in controversy.

The problem is not with Jenson Button but with Lewis Hamilton. Lewis drove a really good race in a car which was way off the pace. He kept out of trouble, kept pushing and with the events of a late crash by 2nd placed Vettel and 3rd placed Kubica he ended up in 4th place. The odd thing at the time was that when the safety car came out, Lewis was showing in 3rd position (I had the live timing on) and then at the end of the race he was in 4th, even though overtaking is not allowed under the safety car.

It turned out what had happened was Trulli was in 3rd and had gone off the track and Lewis had obviously gone past, hence showing in 3rd. Trulli then took the place back, which is why he finished in 3rd and got the podium.

After the race however, Lewis said that his team had told him to let Trulli back through (and Trulli said that Hamilton had slowed down, allowing him to pass as he thought Hamilton had a problem) and later on after a stewards enquiry, Trulli was given a penalty for passing under the safety car and Lewis was promoted to 3rd – an excellent result when his car was so far off the pace.

The problem is, it didn’t finish there. On the Thursday after the race, the stewards summoned Hamilton and Trulli back in and after more investigation have disqualified Hamilton (and Mclaren) for misleading the stewards.

It turns out what had happened was that after the above happened, Hamilton and Mclaren both went into the stewards enquiry and told the stewards that they had not let Trulli past.

What doesn’t make sense is that Mclaren knew that the FIA listens to the radio transmissions and had been asking race control several times whether Hamilton had to let Trulli past but did not receive a response because race control were busy dealing with the accident. Why would they lie knowing this information was public? – it just doesn’t make sense to me.

Mclaren claim that they didn’t lie or purposely mislead the stewards but rather just assumed that because the FIA listen to the radio that they knew about the conversation but this seems the opposite to what the FIA are saying.

All very odd!

More information:

• The stewards decision
• Interview with Mclaren
• The Mclaren radio discussion
• FIA response

UPDATE: It doesn’t explain why they lied when they knew the truth was public, but at least this explains what happened: Q&A with Lewis Hamilton - credit to him for standing up and admitting he made a mistake.

The 2009 world championship will be won by the driver who scores the most wins after the FIA unexpectedly decided to adopt Bernie Ecclestone’s favoured scheme rather than the points revisions suggested by the teams.

http://www.itv-f1.com/News_Article.aspx?id=45278

[EDIT: This was later revoked and changed back to the old points system!]