Hamilton should have avoided the collision according to Whitmarsh
For the McLaren team boss, Martin Whitmarsh, the collision between his driver Lewis Hamilton and the Venezuelan Pastor Maldonado could have been avoided. It should even have been avoided.
According to Martin Whitmarsh, the incident that occurred at the end of the race during the European Grand Prix in Valencia between Lewis Hamilton and Pastor Maldonado should have been avoided by his driver.
Promised a strong third place, the British driver loses many points in the process and consequently drops to third place in the world championship that he had been leading until then.
The fault that led to the collision between the McLaren driver and the Williams driver was attributed to the latter. Maldonado was thus penalized with 20 seconds on his race time, which dropped him out of the points, to twelfth position.
Even if we saw Lewis Hamilton quite upset right after the incident, nervously tapping his steering wheel, he still put things into perspective after the race: « In the end, I lost the lead in the championship to Fernando Alonso and Mark Webber. It’s not the end of the world. »
But Martin Whitmarsh seems a little more annoyed and thinks his driver should have reacted differently to Maldonado’s attack: « In hindsight, when you know you’re dealing with someone like that, you may need to have a different approach. »
For his part, Niki Lauda, always very critical when it comes to commenting on the current affairs of Formula 1, thinks that Pastor Maldonado does not have what it takes to compete with the greatest: « The winner of Barcelona? Who was that? Maldonado, but no one remembers! Seven winners in seven races, that amuses you journalists, but everything needs to return to normal. People who watch Formula 1 need their heroes. » he declared to the Austrian newspaper Kleine Zeitung.
