Scandal - Lewis Hamilton and McLaren Mercedes Disgrace
In one of the more bizarre scandal developments, Lewis Hamilton and McLaren Mercedes are in disgrace today for being caught lying to stewards in Australia.
Australia was a watershed for McLaren Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton in many ways. It quickly became apparent that the McLaren is a very poor car. At the same time, Lewis Hamilton put in the best drive of his Formula One career. It was a race worthy of a World Champion has he aggressively, yet maturely, drove from the back of the pack to a fourth place finish. His position was bumped up to third after the race and that is where everything went bad.
Lewis Hamilton and McLaren have been caught lying to the stewards in Australia.
Yikes.
The situation is simple, if bizarre. A crash between Sebastian Vettel and Robert Kubica brought out the safety car with a few laps left. During the safety laps, Jarno Trulli went off the track from his third place position. Hamilton drove past him. Trulli came back on the track, Hamilton pulled over, slowed down and Trulli drove back into the third place position.
You cannot pass another car during the safety car unless that car has gone off the track. Since Trulli passed Hamilton, he was given a 25 second penalty…effectively booting him out of the point positions. Trulli clamed Hamilton nearly stopped and he had no choice. Hamilton and McLaren were called to the Stewards to discuss the situation. Hamilton denied doing as much or that McLaren told him to do so. McLaren agreed. The stewards then found Trulli passed illegally and Hamilton was bumped to third.
There was just one problem.
The radio conversations between teams and their drivers are recorded. The transcript from McLaren shows that the team and Hamilton both discussed the situation and intentionally slowed down. This is exactly the opposite of what Hamilton told the stewards, to wit, a bold face lie.
What a mess. McLaren is not contesting the situation. Instead, Hamilton has blamed Sporting Director Dave Ryan and McLaren has suspended him. This smells like a “fall guy” declaration, but the bigger issue has to be the extremely poor management at McLaren.
Why did this happen at all? I understand one point could make a difference at the end of the year, but McLaren has destroyed their reputation on an obvious lie. This isn’t some nefarious Ferrari conspiracy. This is McLaren shooting themselves in the foot over the difference between third and fourth place. If McLaren finished fourth, it would still be an outstanding run and far better than the team ever could have hoped for realistically.
It is going to be a miserable season for McLaren. McLaren fans can claim the car will improve during the year and it will, but the team is so far behind the frontrunners that 2009 should be spent developing the 2010 car. While that is happening, McLaren needs to get its collective act together and try to go a full season with no further scandals!
Lemmy