Formula 1 News: McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton admits winning the F1 title will be tough from here on
Lewis Hamilton, the 2008 F1 World Champion, has admitted that winning the Championship from here on would be an uphill task. Hamilton crashed out of the Singapore Grand Prix after a collision with Mark Webber and ended up going
home empty handed. This was not the first time this had happened to Hamilton; just a couple of weeks back at Monza, it was Felipe Massa from Ferrari that bumped into the British driver and ended his race.
"Twenty points is a massive gap with four races to go. I have to hope for something. But the points gap is just a race victory away. It's not insurmountable." said Hamilton.
Lewis was running in 3rd place from the start at Singapore, right behind Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull and Fernando Alonso of Ferrari. Mark Webber from Red Bull made a clever move in the 3rd lap, when a Force
India car crashed and safety cars came on Webber went into the pits and came back with new hard tyres. The proactive manoeuvre paid off and Australian moved past Hamilton for the 3rd place.
Hamilton being himself could not bear to be overtaken and tried all out to regain his place. The Brit saw an opening and went for it; as he tried to move ahead on the outside Webber tried to mark his territory and there was contact
between the 2 cars. Webber managed to continue while Hamilton was seen storming off the tracks as his car broke down.
"I saw Mark made a mistake and got caught by a backmarker so I knew I could slipstream him into Turn Seven and I thought I was enough past him," said Hamilton.
"After that I'm not really sure what happened, he was in my blind spot, I didn't see him alongside me, next thing I know it my tyre's blown and that's it," said Hamilton.
"I'll have to watch it on TV and see what really happened."
"[With not finishing at the previous Grand Prix in Italy] I couldn't have had a worse two races at this time of year. Hopefully myself or Jenson can still win the world championship. I have to get my head down and hope for something."
The disappointing outing in Singapore now means that Hamilton is trailing Webber by 20 points and is behind Fernando Alonso by 9.
Hamilton, who is known to blame others quite quickly, refrained this time from making any suggestions that Webber was at fault in the incident. However Martin Whitmarsh, the team principal at McLaren, did not hold back his feelings
and made it clear that he believed Webber could have done better in that incident.
"We are not here to attack Mark Webber, but at the point of the incident Lewis is legitimately in front, he left space, in hindsight he should have left more, but it was not reckless and he was unlucky to come away like he did.
Mark was lucky to get away with it," said Whitmarsh
After the incident, just a lap later, there was an announcement on the board by the race stewards that no further inquiries would be made against Webber regarding the incident.
Mark Webber should also consider himself lucky to have come away unscathed from the incident. After the race the pictures of his front wheel showed how close the Aussie was to joining Hamilton in the pits right in middle of the
race.
Mark Webber, after the race, said that it was his right to defend his place, and he did it totally within the rules of the sport.
"It was a key part of the race, it was important that I kept him out," Webber said
"It was the same as Monza for Lewis and I could easily have been out, and there was contact.
"This can happen sometimes, we brake completely on the limit. For sure it was incredibly tight - we did not hit that hard, but enough to probably put both of us out of the race. Fortunately I could continue.”
He concluded, "It's not something you want to do all the time."
Tags: