Dennis defends Hamilton after pit error
Monday, 09 June 2008 11:44
http://www.itv-f1.com/News_Article.aspx?id=42951McLaren boss Ron Dennis has defended Lewis Hamilton after his calamitous pit lane accident in Canada.
The British ace had dominated the opening part of the Montreal race, only to crash out in the pit exit when he slammed into the back of Kimi Raikkonen's Ferrari, which was stopped at the red light while the safety car queue came past.
The stewards have handed Hamilton a ten place grid penalty for the French Grand Prix as a punishment for the incident.
While Dennis accepted that the penalty was justified, he said it had been a difficult situation for Hamilton - who had just dropped from first to third at his pit stop and was concentrating on Raikkonen and Robert Kubica racing side by side down the pit lane in front of him.
"No racing driver would deliberately put himself out of a grand prix, and the plain fact is that Lewis didn’t realise that the cars in front of him were coming to a halt until too late," he said.
"It’s difficult for a driver to decide whether to focus on the lights or on the cars ahead in situations like that.
"Having said that, we accept the stewards’ decision."
McLaren's CEO Martin Whitmarsh agreed with Dennis and said the team had "absolutely not" considered appealing against the stewards' verdict.
"We regard the stewards' decision as hard but fair," he said.
"Hard in the sense that it clearly makes Lewis's task more difficult in Magny-Cours, but fair on the grounds that we have no argument with their contention that he did cause an avoidable accident.
"Sometimes severe consequences can be the results of split-second misjudgments.
"And, in this instance, we'll take the loss of a likely win and the 10-place grid penalty squarely on the chin."
He said the team was already considering how to amend its strategy in France to give Lewis the best chance of recovering from the penalty.
"Without giving too much away, I suspect he'll run a little bit longer in the first stint than would otherwise have been the case," Whitmarsh said.
"We haven't modelled it yet, but intuitively that's what we'll probably do."
He also insisted that this year's McLaren would be on the pace in France - a track where Ferrari dominated last year, one that has seen five Ferrari victories in the last seven seasons, and where McLaren hasn't triumphed once, in 2000.
"At this point last year, the characteristics of our car meant Ferrari were kinder to the tyres in the race and had better high-speed corner performance than us," Whitmarsh said.
"This year, we've had better high-speed performance and we're going into two circuits - Magny-Cours and Silverstone - which should suit us."
and i have my bets on Fernando 
cause believe you me he will be an amazinf credit to the Itallian Stallions 
