Ron Dennis is insisting that despite Hamilton s resounding victory at the weekend, his team are not yet prepared to accept that he has won the drivers championship not whilst it is still mathematically possible for either Alonso or Raikkonen to overtake Hamilton and win.
There are two races remaining in the 2007 season and Hamilton has a 12 point lead over team-mate Fernando Alonso. Ferrari s Kimi Raikkonen is a further five points behind. If Hamilton is able to win in next weekend s race, he will have won the drivers championship.
Despite the strong position of his two drivers, Dennis has insisted that the McLaren team are still fully focused on winning more races as the drivers championship is still not 100% decided.
The team are calm and focused,” Dennis remarked. “Even now, we’ll relax a bit tonight, but we want to concentrate on the remaining two races. Clearly Lewis is in a strong position, but it’s clearly not over for Fernando.”
Dennis then praised Hamilton s drive in treacherous conditions and believes the race could prove to be the decisive race of the season. “We had to be careful with information overload – visibility was so bad he couldn’t rely on his pit signals so we were feeding him with data and it was difficult to know how much to give him. But overall it was a tremendously well-disciplined race.
“Kubica made life very interesting, and it was a strange thing to do in such poor conditions. We were very lucky not to damage the car. There was some vibration coming from the car, which we were monitoring, but we could see it wasn’t suspension. We anticipated some bodywork damage but he was very disciplined. A tremendous race.
“The challenge for a driver especially one leading the race is not to drive too quickly. The challenge for the team is not to go too much on slowing him down. The message is not to take too many risks. We kept him informed of where the puddles were where the heaviest parts of water were, and we were encouraging him to back off in Turn 4, and Turn 10 where we could see the standing water.
“It was a disciplined race. But it’s not over for Fernando and we will give both drivers equal opportunities to win the world championship.”
