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Hamilton explains Button tangle

Lewis Hamilton has explained his clash with team-mate Jenson Button near the start of the Canadian Grand Prix.

The two team-mates came together at the start of Lap 8 when Hamilton tried to overtake Button forcing Hamilton to retire from the race.

“He [Button] made a mistake into the last corner so I got the run on him and was on the outside,” Hamilton explained. “He just kept moving across, whether or not he saw me, and I was in the wall.”

“I haven’t seen the footage yet, but I felt that I was halfway up the outside on him. There was nothing I could do – It was too late for me to bail out. I thought I’d be going past but he didn’t leave me any room.

“I don’t think it was intentional. I know Jenson quite well and he wouldn’t do that. I thought I was alongside him, but it doesn’t matter now.”

The incident left Hamilton with a badly damaged rear tyre. The team also believed that the suspension had been damaged and therefore retired Hamilton from the race. However Hamilton has revealed that the suspension was actually fine on his car and he could have continued.

“It was only the tyre that was busted so I put the diff-lock on and I was going to drive it back to the garage and the team told me to retire,” Hamilton explained to the BBC. “I thought that the suspension had gone, because that was what they told me, but it turns out it was not.”

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